March 03, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
Leibniz and Newton - The Two Mathematical Giants
What exactly it was in the solution that he
got via mail that compelled Johann to believe that it was Newton I am not aware
of but this remark of his is telling.
On opening the envelope and going through
the solution Johann was struck with the brilliance of the solution and he exclaimed
that he “recognizes a lion from his claw mark”.
All this while we were witness to the story
of how Johann tried to prop up Leibniz as the first and only inventor of
calculus but he did not seem to have succeeded for he was forced to acknowledge
that Newton was at the least very well versed with both its concept and
application even though this fact did not establish him as an inventor of the
idea of calculus.
Now as if to hit back at the Leibniz camp,
in 1699 Fatio came out with a book that if translated from Latin into English
would be titled as follows:
“A two-fold geometrical investigation of
the line of briefest descent, to which is added a geometric investigation of
the solid of revolution that produces the minimum resistance.”
(“Solid of revolution” is a technical term
that is applicable to mathematics, engineering and also manufacturing and it
refers to a solid figure that is obtained by rotating a plane curve around some
straight line that lies on the same plane.)
In this book he elaborated on the
brachistochrone problem along with another problem that was introduced by
Newton in the book II of Principia and tackled them using calculus.
In his book Fatio stressed upon himself as
one of the early founders of mathematics of calculus.
Yet at the same time very firmly and unequivocally
he placed Newton as the true and the original pioneer of this new area of
mathematics.
This is how he put it in the book:
“I recognize that Newton was the first and
by many years the most senior inventor of this calculus: whether Leibniz, the
second inventor, borrowed anything from him, I prefer that the judgment be not
mine, but theirs who have seen Newton’s letters and his manuscripts.
Nor will the silence of the more modest
Newton, or the active exertions of Leibniz in everywhere ascribing the
invention of calculus to himself, impose upon any person who examines these
papers as I have done.”
From what little I know of Newton’s
personality, he was definitely a recluse, introvert and unsocial (if not
antisocial), but he cannot be considered modest by any standards.
It is certain that a brilliant person like
him must certainly have understood how far superior he was intellectually to
average human apes and yet he was intensely insecure, fearful of any kind of
criticism leveled at his work.
This could be the reason for his delayed
publication of his idea of fluxions that he was working on as early as in 1666
but never published anything serious on it until 1693 and gave a complete
account of it only in 1704.
It is even possible that the germ of the
idea came first to Newton but infinitesimal calculus in its complete form was
developed independently by Leibniz first with the notations that are still in
use today.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor
Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the International
Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend
this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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