I will try to return the GREAT day papers first - I hope for Friday for those who turned in on Monday, to advise with those people.  Remember your presentations are two weeks from yesterday.  

Unfortunately, I have another exam tomorrow evening and so will be doing virtual office hours again (remember JohannesOhrs on AOLIM).  Also, I will be unavailable in all capacities a week from tomorrow 4p ->.  Therefore, esp. for those presenting, please don't hesitate to schedule meetings with me outside of office hours.  This is important, and I do want to be available to you in spite of my scheduling challenges.

§8.3.4-

We'll talk about other (more familiar) work of Monge, but he did project 3d objects on to the xy, yz and xz planes.  

Gauß's 17-gon was notable because it was the first regular polygon constructed in millennia.  His long discussion is precisely for Gauß's construction.  We'll look at it.  This has nothing to do with Gaußian elimination, or any other results of Gauß.   Such constructions in practice aren't commonly performed today in research mathematics.  Part of this is because the ancient construction problems are almost entirely solved.  There are plenty of other ways to construct things.  

Impossibilities are proven by contradiction.  

Surely there are many contributions of Gauß - as typical for us - we will only consider one aspect, which Suzuki has found valuable.  

Germain used a pseudonym to hide her gender.  She communicated to Gauß thru letters.  

There are still always things omitted.  Fourier got slighted here with Poisson.  This will only get worse.  As always, please explore the things that interest you elsewhere.  

Gauß's childhood summing story probably is not true - at least it's difficult to verify.  

I think Gergonne's satement about communication says that it is important to make new ideas understandable to the public.  I agree to a point - if we assume a highly educated passer-by.

We cannot discuss Germain's proof - too difficult and too obscure.  Germain only spoke up for Gauß's safety out of academic respect.  

Poisson made significant contributions to probability - those are probably his most famous.  Also appears in differential equations, theoretical physics,

"How does Suzuki know that the students were incapable of appreciating Lagrange's work?"  There are records of his students' reactions, and information about how he presented the material.  Combining that with knowing the background at the time we can come to such conclusions.  

Repeated square roots are definitely constructible.  Wantzel proved things like this by considering the coordinates that would appear as intersections in constructions.  

Suzuki emphasises professors to distinguish them from readers and examiners.  

Projective geometry was clearly "in the air"....is this the same thing as saying something is "up in the air?"  No, it was an idea that many had at the time.  

"I think it was very bold of Poisson to say that "Life is good for only two things: to study mathematics, and to teach it".  It made me wonder if you agree with the statement or disagree and I personally think you would agree."  Hm.  Ask me about some of the other things that I'm passionate about some other time.