Cory -
I agree kids should be doing research from an early age. But it can be more than fact-finding....and they should learn about mind blowing maths and physics ideas, but not necessarily through biographical trivia and the craft of building a Powerpoint presentation.
My point about this famous mathematicians HW is it is pointlessly harder without being any more skillfull, than researching any other randomn thing.
It sounds more stretching to say 'research a famous mathematician' than to say 'research a famous sportsperson' but the research skills are the same - find some facts, put them on some slides, make it look presentable.How do you know when its done - when its reached a reasonable length or you run out of time or patience.
How do you know when a real piece of research is done - when you've worked out the answer to the problem and collected enough evidence to make the case to someone else.
In fact, I think kids research and analysis skills probably get used less here because the primary thing the kids are doing is looking for bits that they can understand out of a body of knowledge that is way beyond them (calculus, relativity etc..) rather than building on a body of knowledge the already have.
I just think too many projects and bits of school work are like this - the aim seems to be to make something that looks impressive rather than to help kids to practice thinking.