Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. He was one of the great thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is known as the

“LAST UNIVERSAL GENIUS”

EARLY LIFE

Leibniz's mother Catharina Schmuck was the third wife of father Friderich Leibniz, who was a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig.

He lost his father at the age of 6

At the age of 7, Leibniz entered Nicolai School in Leipzig.

Although only basic latin was taught at school, Leibniz had far more sophisticated knowledge about Latin and Greek by the age of 12.

He denied the correctness of then popular Aristotle's Logic and started to develop his own ideas over the subject. He liked reading books about metaphysics and the ones written by his father.

He went to University of Leipzig at the age of 14.

Here he mainly studied philosophy (which was well taught) & mathematics (which was poorly taught). He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1663.

After graduation Leibniz went to Jena to spend the summer term of 1663.

By October 1663, he was back in Leipzig to start his studies towards doctorate in Law.

His mother died a few days after his return :(

CONTRIBUTIONS

CONTRIBUTIONS He was the first to describe a PINWHEEL CALCULATOR in 1685 and invented the LEIBNIZ WHEEL, used in the ARITHMOMETER, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator.

He refined the BINARY NUMBER SYSTEM , which is at the foundation of virtually all DIGITAL COMPUTERS

Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator, which resembles symbolic logic, can be viewed as a way of making calculations feasible.

Leibniz was the first to see that the coefficients of a system of linear equations could be arranged into an array, now called a matrix.

Leibniz's discoveries of Boolean algebra and of symbolic logic, also relevant to mathematics

Leibniz thought symbols were important for human understanding . His notation for the infinitesimal calculus is an example of his skill in this regard

The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: "I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x..."

FORMAL LOGIC

“The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate [calculemus], without further ado, to see who is right.”

------ LEIBNEZ

Leibniz is the most important logician. Leibniz enunciated the principal properties of what we now call conjunction, disjunction, negation, identity, set inclusion and the empty set.

CALCULUSLeibniz is credited, along with Sir Isaac Newton, with the invention of infinitesimal calculus (that comprises differential and integral calculus)

He introduced several notations used to this day, for instance the integral sign ∫ representing an elongated S, from the Latin word summa and the d used for differentials, from the Latin word differentia.

The product rule of differential calculus is still called "Leibniz's law". In addition, the theorem that tells how and when to differentiate under the integral sign is called the Leibniz integral rule

All mathematicians weren’t the most intelligent people on earth.

For them ,

THEIR “I CAN” WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEIR “IQ”

Shivek KhuranaCluster Innovation Centre

University Of Delhi