About one dispute
When the German historian, diplomat, physicist, and mathematician G.W. Leibniz (1646–1716) arrived in Paris on his diplomatic travels in 1672, French scientists entrusted him with organizing Pascal’s (1623–1662) scientific legacy. Thus, a sketch came into Leibniz’s hands in which Pascal had attempted to solve the problem of transforming a secant into a tangent to a curve. Pascal never solved this problem, but using it, Leibniz discovered his infinitesimal calculus. He published his work in 1684 under the title “A New Method for Maxima and Minima…”. The work contained rules for differentiation, the condition for the existence of an extremum, and the existence of an inflection point. Two years later, another work followed with rules for integration and the integral symbol.
Around the same time, the English physicist I. Newton (1643–1727), while solving physical problems, discovered a new mathematical method that, except for the notation used, did not differ from Leibniz’s work. Newton encrypted the essence of his new method in a letter to his friend Oldenburg as follows:
6 aeccdae 13eff 7i 3l 9n 4o 4qrr 4s 9t 12vx
The numbers before the letters indicate how many times each letter is repeated in the Latin sentence, which translates as: “From the given equation containing fluents, determine the fluxion, and conversely.” It is, of course, very difficult to understand the essence of differentiation and integration from this sentence. Newton did not publish his new method. He did not even use it in his most important work, “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” He considered the physical results more important than the mathematical method by which he obtained them.
Leibniz’s method spread successfully throughout the scientific world. This worried English patriots, especially since they knew that Sir Isaac had discovered something similar. Around 1699, a dispute over priority broke out, mainly among the supporters, friends, and students of both mathematicians. In response to many challenges and requests, Newton explained his method of fluxions in his 1704 work “Optics.” This further intensified the dispute over priority. Leibniz was accused of having learned everything about the new method during his visit to London. The controversy, treated almost as a form of sport, began attracting more and more people—various mediators and peacemakers who only fueled passions further. The dispute became an absurd fact upon which two brilliant men wasted their last energies.
The history of mathematics has clearly shown that both great scholars discovered their methods independently of each other. Newton did discover differential and integral calculus earlier (1665–1666), and Leibniz later (1673–1676), but Leibniz was the first to publish it (1684), while Newton did so only in 1704.