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The Calculus Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician born in 1646 who independently co-discovered calculus. He developed much of the foundations of calculus including differentiation and integration. Some of his key contributions included developing modern calculus notation including the use of d/dx for derivatives and ∫ for integrals. He also derived many foundational calculus rules including the product, quotient and chain rules. While his work resembled modern calculus more than Newton's, Newton's reluctance to publish initially caused Leibniz's version of calculus to become more widely known and adopted on the European continent.

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190 views5 pages

The Calculus Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician born in 1646 who independently co-discovered calculus. He developed much of the foundations of calculus including differentiation and integration. Some of his key contributions included developing modern calculus notation including the use of d/dx for derivatives and ∫ for integrals. He also derived many foundational calculus rules including the product, quotient and chain rules. While his work resembled modern calculus more than Newton's, Newton's reluctance to publish initially caused Leibniz's version of calculus to become more widely known and adopted on the European continent.

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SUETA DAVES
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© © All Rights Reserved
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The Calculus 8

" Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

On July 1, 1646, Leibniz (1646 - 1716)


was born into a pious Lutheran fam-
ily. He was educated at the Nicolai
School. Though his father died when
he was just six years old, much of his
education came from his father’s li-
brary. At the age of fifteen, he entered
the University of Leipzig as a law stu-
dent. It was at the University he en-
countered for the first time the great
masters of science such as Galileao,
Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and
René Descates. Among his goals, even
at an early age and extending though-
out his adult life,
was to “reconcile” these thinkers with Aristotle and the Scholastics.
He was a deep thinker from the onset of his career. His baccalau-
reate thesis of 1663, De Principio Individui (”On the Principle of the
Individual”), emphasized the existential value of the individual, who
is not to be explained either by matter alone or by form alone but
rather by his whole being (entitate tota). He received his doctorate in
1667. His original thesis idea was ambitious, to work out an algebra
of human thought, an attempt to symbolize thought and to work out a
combinatorial calculus.
Though a philosopher and mathematician his entire life, he believed
that academics should be founded in a wide variety of arts. Toward this
end, he worked on hydraulic presses, windmills, lamps, submarines,
clocks, and a variety of mechanical devices. He also experimented
with phosphorus, developed a water pump run by windmills, which
aided in the exploitation of the mines of the Harz Mountains. Indeed
he frequently worked these mines as an engineer from 1680 to 1685.
In 1672, on a diplomatic mission to Paris, Leibnitz met and for the
first time studied mathematics seriously with Huygens. As a diplomat
he made two trips to London, in 1673 and 1676, where it is possible
he had access to Newton’s manuscript. Only ten years later he began
to publish short pieces on calculus.
By 1685, Leibniz had worked out the foundations of both integral
and differential calculus. With this discovery, he ceased to consider
time and space as substances–another step closer to monadology. He
began to develop the notion that the concepts of extension and motion
contained an element of the imaginary, so that the basic laws of motion
The Calculus 9

could not be discovered merely from a study of their nature.


Always conscious of the presentation of an idea, he developed the
present day notation for the differential and integral calculus. He never
thought of the derivative as a limit.
Leibniz founded the Berlin Academy in 1700 and was its first
president. He became more and more a recluse in his later years.

2.1 Leibnitz’ Mathematics

His first investigations were with the harmonic triangles . .


!
!

! !
" "

! ! !
$ ' $

! ! ! !
& !" !" &

..
.
From this he noticed that
.#$ = .#!!%$ ¡ .#%$*!
.#$ = .#%$!! ¡ .#!!%$!! %

This means that sums along 45" diagonals of . are sums of differences.
So for example
µ ¶ µ ¶
1 1 1 1 1 1
+ + + ¢¢¢ = 1¡ + ¡ + ¢ ¢ ¢ = 1%
2 6 12 2 2 3

Also,
µ ¶ µ ¶ µ ¶
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
+ + + ¢¢¢ = ¡ + ¡ + ¡ + ¢¢¢
3 12 30 2 6 6 12 12 20
1 1 1
= + + + ¢¢¢
2 6µ 12 ¶
1 1 1
¡ + + + ¢¢¢
6 12 20
µ ¶
1 1
= 1¡ 1¡ = %
2 2
The Calculus 10

Multiplying by 3 we sum the pyramidal numbers


1 1 3
1+ + + ¢¢¢ = %
4 10 2

The importance of these ideas rested with their applications of


summing differences in geometry. That is, he sees the possibility
Z Z
& !=! &! = !

where Z
! = !# + !! + ¢ ¢ ¢ + !!

&! = !# ¡ !#!!
X Z
%
&! = &! = !
R
Leibnitz interpreted the term & ! as area
Z
& ! = ! &"
R
(i.e. &
&"
! = ! ). This gives in principle his fundamental theorem.
By 1673 he was still struggling to develop a good notation for his
calculus and his first calculations were
R clumsy. On 21 November 1675
he wrote
R a manuscript using the + (") &" notation for the first time.
The symbol was an elongated S, which of course stood for sum.
In the same manuscript the product rule for differentiation is given.
The quotient rule first appeared two years later, in July 1677. Leibnitz
was very conscious of notation. He recognizes two separate branches.
differentia and summa
Leibnitz’ clarity of differencing was applied to the difference trian-
gle, which is the one we use today. From it he derives the sum, product
and quotient rules, at first erroneously. It is
&("!) = " &! + ! &"
and not
&("!) = &" &!
as he originally thought.
In 1684 he gives the power rules for powers and roots. The chain
rule is transparent from his notation
&("! ) = #"!!! &"
p (p!
&( ! "' ) = "'!( &"
)
The Calculus 11

In 1684 he solves a problem posed by Debeaune to Descartes in


1639, that being to find a curve whose subtangent is a constant:
&"
! =( or ( &! = ! &"
&!
Leibnitz takes &" = 1 and gets ! = $ &!; that is, the ordinates are propor-
tional to their increments. So the curve is logarithmic (“exponential”
in modern terms).
In 1695, he computes the differential of / = ! " where ! and " are
variables. With Jacques Bernoulli’s suggestion he solves this by taking
the logarithm of both sides.
log / = " log !
&/ &!
= " + log !&"%
/ !
Hence
&(! " ) = "!"!! &! + !" log !&"

Leibnitz develops a fundamental theorem: One can find a curve /


such that &/'&" = ! . It is given by
Z (
! &" = /())%
#

By 1690 Leibnitz has discovered most ideas in current calculus text


books.
Leibnitz was more interested in solving differential equations than
finding areas. Among them he derives and solves the familiar differ-
ential equation for the sine function. He developed the separation of
variables method.
Among the curves worked on by Leibniz were the Astroid, the
Catenary, the Cycloid, the Epicycloid, the Epitrochoid, the Hypocycloid,
the Hypotrochoid, the semi cubical parabola and the Tractrix.

# Summary

Our modern calculus resembles that of Leibnitz far more than New-
ton. Possibly because of Newton’s reluctance to publish Leibnitz’s
version became better known on the continent. Leibnitz’s calculus was
somewhat easier to comprehend and apply. This cost English mathe-
matics almost a century of isolation from the continent and the resulting
progress implied.
The Calculus 12

$ First Calculus Texts:

² L’Hospital, Analyse des Infiniment Petits four l’intelligence des


lignes courbes, 1696 He makes fundamental statements in the begin-
ning of his text that make clear that he assumes infinitesimals are real
objects, though arbitrarily small.
² Humphrey Ditton (1675-1715) An Institution of Fluxions, 1706
² Charles Hayes (1678-1760) A Treatise on Fluxions, 1706.

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