History Of Calculus

595 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Calculus history

Noah Chetelat Mr. McLaughlin Calculus 22 APR 14 A Brief History of Calculus by an Amateur Ideas preceding the concepts of functions, derivatives, and integrals were developed throughout the 17th century. That which we know as calculus “existed” as a collection of ideas not just from Western Europe, but ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, China, and Japan. Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham, born in what is now southeastern Iraq, was renowned for his many books and his work in astronomy and optics. His interests ranged over geometry, algebra, and number theory, and he is one of the first ever to integrate a fourth-degree polynomial. Circa 250 B.C., Archimedes wrote a book--On Conoids and Spheroids--that demonstrated a method of finding the volume of the solid formed when a parabola is rotated about its axis. At first glance, the concept in words very closely resembles the modern method of calculating this volume. However, upon algebraic analysis, the two seem to have a good amount of differences. “In particular, if a and b are positive constants and we take the region bounded above b...

Show More
Related

  • The Rise Of Silas Lapham Analysis

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    How does William Dean Howells convey his work as an American Realist writer? American realism writers demonstrated realism in a variety of ways; by the life experiences they had and how they dealt with current social, personal, and economic issues. William Dean Howells was an American Realist writer that wrote about plausible problems that reflected actual issues that occurred at the present time. Labor problems, such as the Haymarket Incident: the wrongful persecution of radicals in 1887, were pivotal roles that gradually characterized Howells realism as well as economic issues. Another factor that affected the economy, which brought about the author’s evidence of realism, was the post-Civil War. Howells wanted to show a “clear vision of joys

    Read More

  • Isaac Newton: The 17th Century Scientific Revolution

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    Isaac Newton was born on January 4th, 1643. Newton was an established analyst and math expert, and was considered as one of the skilled minds of the 17th century Scientific Revolution.With his discoveries in optics, movement and mathematics, Newton improved the ways of thinking/basic truths/rules of modern remedy. His father was a prosperous local farmer, with the name also, Isaac Newton, who happened to have passed away when Newton was only 3 months old.When Newton was born, he was very tiny and weak so the doctors suggested that he would not survive. Isaac lived to the age of 84 years old. (Bio.com)Newton’s mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, left Isaac with his maternal grandmother, because she left him for a man named Barnabas Smith, whom she married and lived her life with.This experience left Newton, broken-hearted, but he did not want to give up; no not at all, he kept leaning towards his interest, and drooling over his magnificent work.

    Read More

  • Blaise Pascal's Contribution To Mathematics

    659 Words  | 2 Pages

    No other scholar has affected more fields of learning than Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623 in Clermont, France, he was born into a family of respected mathematicians. Being the childhood prodigy that he was, he came up with a theory at the age of three that was Euclid’s book on the sum of the interior of triangles. At the age of sixteen, he was brought by his father Etienne to discuss about math with the greatest minds at the time. He spent his life working with math but also came up with a plethora of new discoveries in the physical sciences, religion, computers, and in math. He died at the ripe age of thirty nine in 1662(). Blaise Pascal has contributed to the fields of mathematics, physical science and computers in countless ways.

    Read More

  • Sir Isaac Newton

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    Newton took his first step beyond his mentors during the winter of 1664-5. During this time, Newton extended the use of Willis's infinite series to evaluate areas and developed what we now know as the binomial theorem. In Newton's studies he generalized Pascal's Binomial Theorem to fractional and negative powers (Westfall 42).

    Read More

  • Why in the world do we need derivative

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many years ago humans discovered that with the use of mathematical calculations many things can be calculated in the world and even the universe. Mathematics consists of many different operations. The most important that is used by mathematicians, scientists and engineers is the derivative. Derivatives can help make calculations of anything with respect to another event or thing. Derivatives are mostly common when used with respect to time. This is a very important tool in this revolutionary world. With derivatives we can calculate the rate of change of anything with respect to time. This way we can have a sort of knowledge of upcoming events, and the different behaviors events can present. For example the population growth can be estimated applying derivatives. Not only population growth, but for example when dealing with plagues there can be certain control. An other example can be with diseases, taking all this events together a conclusion can be made.

    Read More

  • Calculus Case Study

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Calculus is defined as, "The branch of mathematics that deals with the finding and properties of derivatives and integrals of functions, by methods originally based on the summation of infinitesimal differences. The two main types are differential calculus and integral calculus." (Oxford Dictionary). Contrary to any other type of math, calculus allowed Newton and other scientists to process the different motions and dynamic changes in world, such as the orbit of planets in space. Newton first became interested in the subject of mathematics while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge University. Although he did not focus on any of his math classes during his time as an undergraduate because it focused on Greek mathematics, he instead learned

    Read More

  • Calculus, Leibniz and Newton

    2305 Words  | 5 Pages

    The argument in this paper that even though the onus of the discovery of calculus lies with Isaac Newton, the credit goes to Leibniz for the simple fact that he was the one who published his works first. Appending to this is the fact that the calculus wars that ensue was merely and egotistic battle between humans succumbing to their bare primal instincts. To commence, a brief historical explanation must be given about both individuals prior to stating their cases.

    Read More

  • The History Of Calculus

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    Calculus, the mathematical study of change, can be separated into two departments: differential calculus, and integral calculus. Both are concerned with infinite sequences and series to define a limit. In order to produce this study, inventors and innovators throughout history have been present and necessary. The ancient Greeks, Indians, and Enlightenment thinkers developed the basic elements of calculus by forming ideas and theories, but it was not until the late 17th century that the theories and concepts were being specified. Originally called infinitesimal calculus, meaning to create a solution for calculating objects smaller than any feasible measurement previously known through the use of symbolic manipulation of expressions. Generally accepted, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz were recognized as the two major inventors and innovators of calculus, but the controversy appeared when both wanted sole credit of the invention of calculus. This paper will display the typical reason of why Newton was the inventor of calculus and Leibniz was the innovator, while both contributed an immense amount of knowledge to the system.

    Read More

  • history of algebra

    1187 Words  | 3 Pages

    The simplest forms of equations in algebra were actually discovered 2,200 years before Mohamed was born. Ahmes wrote the Rhind Papyrus that described the Egyptian mathematic system of division and multiplication. Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, Erasasth, and other great mathematicians followed Ahmes (“Letters”). Although not very important to the development of algebra, Archimedes (212BC – 281BC), a Greek mathematician, worked on calculus equations and used geometric proofs to prove the theories of mathematics (“Archimedes”).

    Read More

  • The History of the Number Zero

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    Zero is where it all begins. The use of zero is well known today. But where did it come from? Everything is created, it does not just show up. The use of zero predates the twenty-first century. It is one of the largest controversies of all time. Present day math and even ancient math would not have been the same without it. Zero was conspicuously absent from most early number systems and all earlier civilizations. So where did it come from? No one knows exactly where and when it was invented, nor who invented it. The origin of zero is controversial. Many believe it was invented around 500 B.C., but each civilization/culture has their own theory.

    Read More

  • Development of Tools Throughout Time

    2065 Words  | 5 Pages

    Our world today has many different kinds of tools. I realized this when I was walking through The Home Depot a few weeks ago. On one isle are nails, and screws, the next isle there are power drills to go along with power saws and power sanders. Now imagine the world with no tools, no nails or screws. It would be pretty difficult to do most anything. We would have no houses to live in, no cars to travel to work in, and we would have no place of employment in which to work. Without tools our world would be nothing. This is the world our ancestors faced, and they had nothing but rocks and sticks. Homo Habilis had the challenge of being the first hominid with a larger brain, which allowed him to have the ability to do more things. With early hominids lacking size and strength to kill large animals they used certain objects to kill and devour these animals. This ultimately led to the development of tools.

    Read More

  • The Development of the Concept of Irrational Numbers

    1403 Words  | 3 Pages

    Burton, D. (2011). The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. (Seventh Ed.) New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

    Read More

  • Calculus and Its Use in Everyday Life

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever wonder how scientists figure out how long it takes for the radiation from a nuclear weapon to decay? This dilemma can be solved by calculus, which helps determine the rate of decay of the radioactive material. Calculus can aid people in many everyday situations, such as deciding how much fencing is needed to encompass a designated area. Finding how gravity affects certain objects is how calculus aids people who study Physics. Mechanics find calculus useful to determine rates of flow of fluids in a car. Numerous developments in mathematics by Ancient Greeks to Europeans led to the discovery of integral calculus, which is still expanding. The first mathematicians came from Egypt, where they discovered the rule for the volume of a pyramid and approximation of the area of a circle. Later, Greeks made tremendous discoveries. Archimedes extended the method of inscribed and circumscribed figures by means of heuristic, which are rules that are specific to a given problem and can therefore help guide the search. These arguments involved parallel slices of figures and the laws of the lever, the idea of a surface as made up of lines. Finding areas and volumes of figures by using conic section (a circle, point, hyperbola, etc.) and weighing infinitely thin slices of figures, an idea used in integral calculus today was also a discovery of Archimedes. One of Archimedes's major crucial discoveries for integral calculus was a limit that allows the "slices" of a figure to be infinitely thin. Another Greek, Euclid, developed ideas supporting the theory of calculus, but the logic basis was not sustained since infinity and continuity weren't established yet (Boyer 47). His one mistake in finding a definite integral was that it is not found by the sums of an infinite number of points, lines, or surfaces but by the limit of an infinite sequence (Boyer 47). These early discoveries aided Newton and Leibniz in the development of calculus. In the 17th century, people from all over Europe made numerous mathematics discoveries in the integral calculus field. Johannes Kepler "anticipat(ed) results found… in the integral calculus" (Boyer 109) with his summations. For instance, in his Astronomia nova, he formed a summation similar to integral calculus dealing with sine and cosine. F. B. Cavalieri expanded on Johannes Kepler's work on measuring volumes. Also, he "investigate[d] areas under the curve" ("Calculus (mathematics)") with what he called "indivisible magnitudes.

    Read More

  • The History of Math

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    The 17th Century saw Napier, Briggs and others greatly extend the power of mathematics as a calculator science with his discovery of logarithms. Cavalieri made progress towards the calculus with his infinitesimal methods and Descartes added the power of algebraic methods to geometry. Euclid, who lived around 300 BC in Alexandria, first stated his five postulates in his book The Elements that forms the base for all of his later Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was born abo...

    Read More

  • The Nature of Mathematics

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    The abstractions can be anything from strings of numbers to geometric figures to sets of equations. In deriving, for instance, an expression for the change in the surface area of any regular solid as its volume approaches zero, mathematicians have no interest in any correspondence between geometric solids and physical objects in the real world. A central line of investigation in theoretical mathematics is identifying in each field of study a small set of basic ideas and rules from which all other interesting ideas and rules in that field can be logically deduced. Mathematicians are particularly pleased when previously unrelated parts of mathematics are found to be derivable from one another, or from some more general theory. Part of the sense of beauty that many people have perceived in mathematics lies not in finding the greatest richness or complexity but on the contrary, in finding the greatest economy and simplicity of representation and proof.

    Read More

More about History Of Calculus

Open Document