Overview

Many of the most important and influential advances in mathematics during the eighteenth century involved the elaboration of the calculus, a branch of mathematical analysis that describes properties of functions (curves) associated with a limit process. Although the evolution of the techniques included in the calculus spanned the history of mathematics, calculus was formally developed during the last decades of the seventeenth century by English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and, independently, by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716). Although the logical underpinnings of calculus were hotly debated, the techniques of calculus were immediately applied to a variety of problems in physics, astronomy, and engineering. By the end of the eighteenth century, calculus had proved a powerful tool that allowed mathematicians and scientists to construct accurate mathematical models of physical phenomena ranging from orbital mechanics to...