HackingTheUniverse

Rene Descartes was born in France in 1596. He is known as “the father of modern philosophy” and also contributed to mathematics and general science. The cartesian coordinate system is named for him and he created analytic geometry. He also did some work in the field of optics, with both refraction and reflection.

Prior to Descartes, many mathematicians had worked on using algebra to study principles of geometry (called algebraic geometry) but using a coordinate graphing system to draw shapes provided a new connection between algebra and geometry that revolutionized mathematics, created the field of analytic geometry and supplied foundational elements for calculus.

PRECURSOR:
Euclid
Archimedes
Menaechmus
Apollonius
Al-Khayyam
AlHazen
Fibonacci

CONCURRENT:
Galileo
Pascal
Mersenne
Fermat
Huygens

SUBSEQUENT:
Boyle
Halley
Wallis
Newton
Liebnitz
Snell
Euler