Posted by Andrew McNab on December 21, 1999 at 03:14:15:
In Reply to: maths posted by stephan naylor on December 21, 1999 at 02:10:41:
: when was Isaac born, where and when did he die,
Have a look at the Woolsthorpe pages and the Kensington
page in the London section (there are links to these
from the main page of the site.)
: and is it true that he invented the calculus
I would say so, yes: although I have seen people arguing
that his proofs were not rigorous by today's standards,
he was still the first person to conceive of general
methods of differentiation and integration, based on
limits. Other people had taken a similar approach to
specific problems (Archimedes had calculated the areas
and volumes of some geometric figures for instance) but
this wasn't what we would call 'inventing calculus' as such.
There is another issue here as well: Leibnitz in Germany
also invented methods for differential and integral calculus,
although he did this after Newton and there is some indication
he was aware of some of Newton's work before it was published
(Newton, like many mathematicians of the day, didn't publish
immediately, and 'sat on' important results for many years.)