November 19, 2009. Shelley Costa. Independent Scholar. "Throwing the book at mathematical talent."

December 10, 2009. John W. Dawson. "Development of Compactness."

January 21, 2010. Bud Bowman. Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg.

February 18, 2010. Steven H. Weintraub , Leigh University.

March 18, 2010. Eisso Atzema, University of Maine.

April 22, 2010. Alan Gluchoff, Villanova University.

November 19, 2009. Shelly Costa. "Throwing the book at mathematical talent." In this talk I contrast the careers of late seventeenth-/mid-eighteenth-century mathematical authors Guillaume de I'Hôpital (1661-1704), Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749), and Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799). My basic aim is to assess the impact of social factors such as class, gender, and economic status on contemporary perceptions of mathematical talent and originality. I will recount my recent attempts to do so through a material approach--that is, through a close inspection of the physical features of relevant primary sources.

December 10, 2009. John W. Dawson. "The development of the notion of compactness in topology and logic."
Abstract: During the early decades of the twentieth century the notion of a compact topological space arose as a generalization of results obtained in studies of the topology of the real line (in particular, the Heine-Borel theorem). Somewhat later, what is now called the Compactness Theorem for first-order logic was proved by Godel as a lemma in his proof that every first-order axiom system is semantically complete. But for years thereafter connections between the two notions of compactness lay unrecognized and applications of compactness in logical contexts were not pursued. This talk will survey how the Compactness Theorem eventually came to be regarded as a fundamental tool in model theory and algebra, and will explore why recognition of it's usefulness was so long delayed.

February 18, 2010. Steven H. Weintraub. "On Legendre's Work on the Law of Quadratic Reciprocity."
Abstract: As is well-known, Legendre was the first to state the Law of Quadratic Reciprocity in the form that we now know it (though an equivalent result had earlier been conjectured by Euler), and he was able to prove it in some but not all cases, with the first complete proof being given by Gauss. In this talk we trace the evolution  of Legendre's work on quadratic reciprocity in his four great works on on number theory, from 1785, 1797, 1808, and 1830. 

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