Leibniz - Co-founder of Calculus
He graduated as a Lawyer and published a book on International Law for his Germanic King - later King George IV or V of England
Georgie banned Leibniz from re-entering England because of the English clamor around Newton as the inventor of Calculus
and the claim that Leibniz was an imposter
Story goes that:
He took up mathematics late in life,
after coming across Pascal's mechanical adding machine and expanding it to include multiplication, division and square roots
While displaying his 'calculator' in London he came across McGregor's analysis of the Hyperbola
i.e., method to calculate area under the Hyperbola
Leibniz was fascinated and rushed to Christian Huygens - the Pendulum clock inventor - and requested a crash course in mathematics.
From there on - flowed Europe's calculus
(The English / Newton Calculus was not published till after Leibniz's work. Although Newton's Principia was published with some hint of Calculus. Newton Calculus remained a secret till after his death)
On the other hand, Leibniz's friend and associate Bernoulli further refined Calculus and the first textbooks were published with support of L'Hospital in late 1600
The familiar notation dx/dy is preferred in our textbooks over Newton's dot over 'x'
Leibniz showed the unification of Integration and Differentiation, the Chain Rule ...
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The differences are on the applications
Newton applied Calculus to confirm Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion
Leibniz / Bernoulli applied it to motion of fluids Leibniz tried to formulate kinetic energy of fluid in motion and came closer to formulating it
(There maybe some errors in the above and I appreciate any corrections).
Story ends with: Leibniz died in poverty / buried in an unmarked grave.
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What do I think of Leibniz?
I don't know. So many thoughts, all positive; to sift through.
Edited by
jaish
on Thu 12/02/21 05:28 PM