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22Sketch of the Hijlory of Pure Mathematics. [Aug. 1,new ones. The difcoveries which he made in his early youth, would have fuf-ficed to procure to any other man the.reputation of a confummate geometrician. One of his firft inquiries was to find a general method to folve equations, an important part of analvfis, on which Leibnitz,* alfo laboured, and which hath called forth the exertions of feveral other celebrated mathematicians. He did not find that folution; but he confiderabiy* Godfrey William, Baron of Leibnitz, was born at Leipzick in 1646. He began his ftudies in his native country, which afforded him but indifferent afijftance. He fo.med himfelf, fo to fpeak, by his aiveand ardent geniu3, and at the age of fifteen he had pof-feffed himfelf, with incredible zeal, of all kinds of human knowledge. Poetry, hiftory, antiquities, jurifprudence, philofophy, mathematics, phyfic, c. in a few years came under the dominion of his genius.In the beginning of the year 1673, Leibnitz, having been in London, became acquainted with Mr. Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, with whom he opened an epiftolary corrcfpoodence. After a iiay of lbmc months in the metropolis of England, he returned to Paris, where he had already been in 1672. Then it was that he began► /■* ftnnl II r\. ► L A ll I /!*• A A ■ ■■ A /I rtenlarged the bounds of algebra. He discovered a method for decomposing, when poffible, an equation of any dimenfion, into commenfnrable fa£iors, and he gave a rule for extrnffing the roots of quantities, partly commenfurabie and partly in-commenfurable. He aifo enriched algebra with the celebrated formula, commonly known by the name of Newton's Binomial Theorem. The infinite feries which this formula gives for the quadrature of the circle, was difcovered in another man- er by James Gregory9* who1 was alfo the author of many other very curious feries. In one word, Newton invented the method of fluxions ;*f Leibnitz vindicated his claim to the fublime difcovery ; an 1 the pretenfions of thofe immortal men became the fubjeft of a long controverfy between theEnglifb geometricians and thofe of the Continent.85; It appears that Newton firft difcovered the method of fluxions 5 but it is not lefs certain that Leibnitz invented the differential calculus, without borrowing any thing from Newton. On this f»bje£t I believe we might refer to the teftimony of Newton himfelf, who, in his Principia, has thusJpoken of the German geometrician i 7
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Monthly Magazine
London, Middlesex, GB
Sun, Aug 01, 1802
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