Karolina Pajdak Calculus R Block 3 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born on July 1st, 1646 in Leipzig, Electorate of Saxony

to German parents Friedrich and Catharina. His father, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Leipzig, died when Gottfried was only six years old. Gottfried acquired his fathers library, where he self-taught himself Latin, and then at age 15 enrolled in the same university his father taught where Gottfried got a bachelors degree in philosophy. Later in his life, he met mathematician Christiaan Huygens in Paris, France and realized that his knowledge of math is sparse. He thus began self-studying mathematics which led him to many breakthroughs in math, including the invention of calculus. Leibniz, along with Sir Isaac Newton, is credited with the invention of infinitesimal calculus, which contains differential and integral calculus. Leibniz introduced the integral sign from the Latin word Summa and used d for differentials from Latin word differentia. On November 11th, 1675 Leibniz employed integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of a function y=f(x). Nine years later, he published details of differential calculus but they contained no proof and the following year he published a paper dealing with integral calculus. Leibniz also contributed to calculus through Leibniz notation and Leibnizs law. Leibniz notation, seen as dy/dx, is used in calculus class when

differentiating a function. Leibnizs law is also used when differentiating because it generalizes the product rule. As far as the Chain Rule is concerned, Leibniz notation is helpful because it appears that we can use plain algebra on it. Leibniz notation also helps to understand which variable to use when there is more than one because, for example, dx/dy means the derivative of x in respect to y. Not only do we use infinitesimal calculus in class when figuring out the problems in a book, but differential calculus and integral calculus are used in real life to figure out relationships between time and speed. For example, you can figure out the best possible profit for a company that produces a good by using calculus. You can also figure out how fast oil will spread in case of an oil spill, which is necessary to know when trying to clean it up. As you can see, calculus isn't merely just used to torture students in class. Although it is controversial, and has been since 1711, whether Leibniz or Newton invented calculus, I believe that both men contributed to math in general and both should be credited for their work.