Frequently, over the years I have been asked by new mathematics instructors and by students in mathematics education programs to describe how I use historical topics in my mathematics courses. These praiseworthy, new and prospective mathematics educators have had sound mathematics history courses in college. However, their courses usually have contained only mathematics history and theory, and not the pedagogy which would help them implement historical topics into the mathematics curriculum at a given instructional level. My advice to mathematics instructors is to use a variety of techniques to incorporate mathematics history into their curriculum.
Many techniques are equally applicable at all instructional levels.
The technique that has proved most popular, for me and for my students, is the use of historical vignettes. Students love stories about Archimedes. They cringe when I tell about Hypatia. They smile when I relate about how Descartes conceived the idea of the coordinate system while lying in bed watching a fly cross his ceiling. Students delight in these real-life stories and they remember them.