Born: 1 July 1646 in Leipzig, Saxony (now Germany)
Died: 14 Nov 1716 in Hannover, Hanover (now Germany)

Working independently from Newton, German Gottfried Leibniz also discovered the principles of calculus. Mainly considering the analysis of graphs, he thought of values x and y ranging over domains containing infinite numbers of values – the distance between them he denoted dx and dy – terminology still in use today.

It is from Leibniz’s work that we get the terminology in use today –

the integral as and the derivative as .

Leibniz spent much of the later part of his career defending himself against the attacks of Newton and his supporters, all claiming that he stole his ideas from two letters that he received from Newton years earlier. He based his arguments upon errors Newton had made in calculating second and higher derivatives, which were not made in his own work. However by the stage this information was released the argument had degenerated to a purely nationalistic debate.

Today it is widely accepted that Leibniz developed his theories regarding calculus independently, and his approach to the work was very different to that of Newton. Despite this he also was unable to provide satisfactory proof of his work, and in the end published without proofs. The first part of his work to be published was described by Jacob Bernoulli as an enigma, for although it produced correct answers, but could not be summarily proven to be correct.

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