Who started this controversy?

Question

In Leibniz' and Newton's time, there was a controversy over who invented calcules first, Leibniz or Sir Isaac Newton?

Answer 1

This is a relatively hot topic, being brought up again and again over the last 300 years. During the time that it happened, there was debate.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646--1716) is still often given credit. This is primarily due to the fact that he did publish first. Just because Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727) was touted in a PBS special does not make this real.

"Leibniz and Newton had very different views of calculus in that Newton’s was based on limits and concrete reality, while Leibniz focused more on the infinite and the abstract ." They are now both given credit for independent discoveries. See the third reference:

Oddly enough Leibniz and Newton never argued about this topic and often wrote one another about new findings. The debate stated either at the end of their lifetimes or shortly after their deaths. It was probably stated by some no-name academics who was more interested in promoting their particular school or country than in the mathematics itself.

Answer 2

Here is the mathematical formulation of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus: If a function f is continuous on the interval [a, b] and if F is a function whose derivative is f on the interval [a, b], then


Also, for every x in the interval [a, b],

This realization, made by both Newton and Leibniz, was key to the massive proliferation of analytic results after their work became known. The fundamental theorem provides an algebraic method of computing many definite integrals—without performing limit processes—by finding formulas for antiderivatives. It is also a prototype solution of a differential equation. Differential equations relate an unknown function to its derivatives, and are ubiquitous in the sciences
VR