Digital Math Tutor

History of Calculus

Calculus is called by most math experts the most important discovery/development in the history of math or possibly even mankind.

Who discovered it? The story gets even more interesting.

Sir Isaac Newton, whom almost everyone agrees is the greatest mathematician of all time, actually discovered differential calculus around 1660. The problem was that it involved division by quantities that approached zero, and as every mathematician knows, you can't divide by zero. So, Newton doesn't publish his discovery because he doesn't quite trust it enough.

Ironically, twenty years later, in 1680, he does publish the 'Principia Mathematica', which to this day is considered to be the greatest treatise on mathematics ever published, (even without calculus).

About the same time Newton is publishing 'Principia Mathematica', Gottfried Leibniz has discovered integral calculus, and published. Now it wasn't realized at first that the two math disciplines, diff calc, and int calc, were intrinsically entertwined. One was actually the inverse of the other. 2 sides of the same coin.

Eventually, both Newton and Leibniz realized this and both are credited equally with the discovery of calculus.