Synopses & Reviews
Now regarded as the bane of many college students' existence, calculus was one of the most important mathematical innovations of the seventeenth century. But a dispute over its discovery sewed the seeds of discontent between two of the greatest scientific giants of all time Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Today Newton and Leibniz are generally considered the twin independent inventors of calculus, and they are both credited with giving mathematics its greatest push forward since the time of the Greeks. Had they known each other under different circumstances, they might have been friends. But in their own lifetimes, the joint glory of calculus was not enough for either and each declared war against the other, openly and in secret. This long and bitter dispute has been swept under the carpet by historians perhaps because it reveals Newton and Leibniz in their worst light but The Calculus Wars tells the full story in narrative form for the first time. This vibrant and gripping scientific potboiler ultimately exposes how these twin mathematical giants were brilliant, proud, at times mad and, in the end, completely human.
Synopsis
In the tradition of Wittgensteins Poker, a scientific potboiler about Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnizs bitter and lifelong battle over the invention of calculus.
About the Author
Jason Socrates Bardi obtained graduate degrees in molecular biophysics (M.A., 1998) and science writing (M.A., 2001) from Johns Hopkins University, and has since worked as a professional science writer for a number of companies, government agencies, and private institutions. He spent a year as a writer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, five years as the senior science writer at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, and is currently a writer and editor at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.