Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes was born March 31, 1596 in La Haye, Touraine. Descartes was the son of a minor nobleman and belonged to a family that had produced a number of learned men. At the age of eight, he was enrolled in the Jesuit school of La

Fleche in Anjou, where he remained for eight years. Besides the usual classical studies, he received instruction in math and in Scholastic philosophy. Roman

Catholicism exerted a strong influence on Descartes throughout his life. Upon graduation from school, he studied law at the University of Poitiers, graduating in 1616. He never practiced law, however--in 1618 he entered the service of

Prince Maurice of Nassau at Breda, Netherlands, with the intention of following a military career. In succeeding years Descartes served in other armies, but his attention had already been attracted to the problems of mathematics and philosophy to which he was to devote the rest of his life. He made a pilgrimage to Italy in 1623-24, and spent the years from 1624 to 1628 in France. While in

France, he devoted himself to the study of philosophy and also experimented in optics. In 1628, having sold his properties in France, he moved to the

Netherlands, where he spent most of the rest of his life. He lived for varying periods in a number of different cities in the Netherlands, including Amsterdam,

Deventer, Utrecht, and Leiden.

It was probably during the first years of his residence in the

Netherlands that Descartes wrote his first major work, Essais philosophiques, published in 1637. The work contained four parts: an essay on geometry, another on optics, a third on meteors, and Discours de la methode (Discourse on

Method), which described his philosophical theories. This was followed by other philosophical works, among them Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641) and Principia Philosophiae (The Principles of

Philosophy, 1644). The latter volume was dedicated to Princess Elizabeth Stuart of Bohemia, who lived in the Netherlands and with whom Descartes had formed a deep friendship. In 1649, Descartes was invited to the court of Queen Christina of Sweden in Stockholm to give the queen instruction in philosophy. The rigors of the northern winter brought on the pneumonia that caused his death on

February 1, 1650.

The most notable contribution that Descartes made to mathematics was the systematization of analytic geometry. He was the first mathematician to attempt to classify curves according to the types of equations that produce them. He also made contributions to the theory of equations and succeeded in proving the impossibility of trisecting the angle and doubling the cube.