Newton was foremost a physicist, and in his day, he tackled many difficult issues in physics, the most famous of which was gravity. So why was this new and complicated form of mathematics invented and how does one manage to come up with such an abstract idea? Both men claimed that the other plagiarized them for the rest of their lives, a conflict known as the “great sulk.” Inventing a Math It is worth noting that Newton developed calculus eight years before Leibniz, but Leibniz is known for developing modern European mathematics because he introduced carefully drawn symbols and rules - many people say he was responsible for creating the equals sign (=). It's also the reason Sir Isaac Newton and other innovators were prompted to create some of the most dreaded mathematical equations that we know today.Īround the 1670s, two great men - Sir Isaac Newton of England and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany - discovered and developed calculus independently from each other.īoth men did quite a lot of work forming a language of numbers that could accurately describe nature. That's why many people throughout history worked to create new and better models of nature, leading to advanced mathematics. Initially, math arose to solve problems and predict outcomes in everyday life, and as humans became more interested in how the world worked, they were faced with the limitations of their current mathematical theories. In truth, mathematics is complicated and advanced, and it took hundreds of years to develop this language that can accurately describe the universe in which we live. Nevertheless, many students of mathematics (formal and informal) persevere through years of algebra and arithmetic to find themselves facing a very different beast: calculus. It has a reputation for being a subject of the elite - a terrible, confusing, jumbled mess of illogical expressions and rules that many people just give up trying to decipher at some point. There's a certain four letter word that strikes great fear into the hearts of many people: math.
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