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René Descartes (/ d eɪ ˈ k ɑːr t / day-KART, also UK: / ˈ d eɪ k ɑːr t / DAY-kart; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] ⓘ; [note 3] [11] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) [12] [13]: 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.
Descartes, René – Discours de la méthode, 1692 – BEIC 1273122. Although mathematical methods of investigation have been used to establish meaning and analyse the world since Pythagoras, it was Descartes who pioneered the subject as epistemology, setting out Rules for the Direction of the Mind. He proposed that method, rather than ...
Van Schooten's father, Frans van Schooten Senior was a professor of mathematics at the University of Leiden, having Christiaan Huygens, Johann van Waveren Hudde, and René de Sluze as students. Van Schooten met Descartes in 1632 and read his Géométrie (an appendix to his Discours de la méthode ) while it was still unpublished.
Later, René Descartes (17th century) introduced the modern notation (for example, the use of x—see below) and showed that the problems occurring in geometry can be expressed and solved in terms of algebra (Cartesian geometry). Equally important as the use or lack of symbolism in algebra was the degree of the equations that were addressed.
Frontispiece of Operum Mathematicorum Pars Prima (1657) by John Wallis, the first volume of Opera Mathematica including a chapter entitled Mathesis Universalis.. Mathesis universalis (from Greek: μάθησις, mathesis "science or learning", and Latin: universalis "universal") is a hypothetical universal science modelled on mathematics envisaged by Descartes and Leibniz, among a number of ...
Discourse on Method by René Descartes. In the early 17th century, there were two important developments in geometry. The first and most important was the creation of analytic geometry, or geometry with coordinates and equations, by René Descartes (1596–1650) and Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665).
This enhancement of Descartes' work was primarily carried out by Frans van Schooten, a professor of mathematics at Leiden and his students. Van Schooten published a Latin version of La Géométrie in 1649 and this was followed by three other editions in 1659−1661, 1683 and 1693.
René Descartes; La Géométrie was published in 1637 and written by René Descartes. The book was influential in developing the Cartesian coordinate system and specifically discussed the representation of points of a plane, via real numbers; and the representation of curves, via equations.