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Historical portrait of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1646 – 1716Germany

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Good notation is half of the mathematics.

A short story

Working in Germany while Newton worked in England, Leibniz reached the same big idea (calculus) by a different path. The way we write calculus today, with for slope and for area, was his choice. He believed good notation was more than half the work, and his choices have lasted for three hundred years.

In their own words

Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion, more interesting than the inventions themselves.

Leibniz, letter to Gabriel Wagner, 1696 (English translation).

The lab their idea turned into

Slope Lab

Look closely at one point of a curve. What slope do you see?

Open Slope Lab