|  | | | Rene Descartes |
Rene Descartes, pictured at the right, was one of the dominant thinkers of the early 1600s. His "Discourse" documents his philosophical search for certainty. (It contains the famous phrase "Cogito ergo sum.") The appendix la geometrie introduces the first notion of a coordinate system, uses variables x and y for unkonowns, contains many of the results that we will see this semester, and reads very much like an algebra book from today. His work along with that of Pierre de Fermat lead to the creation of calculus within a generation.
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