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The World Before Calculus: Historical Approaches To The Tangent Line Problem, Lindsay Skinner
The World Before Calculus: Historical Approaches To The Tangent Line Problem, Lindsay Skinner
WWU Honors College Senior Projects
Pierre de Fermat and René Descartes were two brilliant 17th century mathematicians who have had lasting impacts on modern mathematics. Descartes laid the groundwork for the Cartesian coordinate system that is frequently employed in modern mathematics and Fermat’s last theorem vexed the mathematics community until Wiles’ proof was published in 1995. Amidst their many ground-breaking accomplishments these two men produced solutions for another mathematical problem - developing a general method to find the tangent line to a curve.
In spite of their apparent genius, neither man’s method had the lasting impact of their other works. Descartes’ and Fermat’s methods were …