Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Born: 1 July 1646 in Leipzig, Saxony (now Germany)

Died: 14 Nov 1716 in Hannover, Hanover (now Germany)

Gottfried Leibniz was the son of Friedrich Leibniz, a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig. Friedrich Leibniz:-

...was evidently a competent though not original scholar, who devoted his time to his offices and to his family as a pious, Christian father.

Leibniz's mother was Catharina Schmuck, the daughter of a lawyer and Friedrich Leibniz's third wife. However, Friedrich Leibniz died when Leibniz was only six years old and he was brought up by his mother. Certainly Leibniz learnt his moral and religious values from her which would play an important role in his life and philosophy.

At the age of seven, Leibniz entered the Nicolai School in Leipzig. Although he was taught Latin at school, Leibniz had taught himself far more advanced Latin and some Greek by the age of 12. He seems to have been motivated by wanting to read his father's books. As he progressed through school he was taught  Aristotle's logic and theory of categorising knowledge. Leibniz was clearly not satisfied with  Aristotle's system and began to develop his own ideas on how to improve on it. In later life Leibniz recalled that at this time he was trying to find orderings on logical truths which, although he did not know it at the time, were the ideas behind rigorous mathematical proofs. As well as his school work, Leibniz studied his father's books. In particular he read  metaphysics books and theology books from both Catholic and Protestant writers.

In 1661, at the age of fourteen, Leibniz entered the University of Leipzig. It may sound today as if this were a truly exceptionally early age for anyone to enter university, but it is fair to say that by the standards of the time he was quite young but there would be others of a similar age. He studied philosophy, which was well taught at the University of Leipzig, and mathematics which was very poorly taught. Among the other topics which were included in this two year general degree course were  rhetoric, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He graduated with a bachelors degree in 1663 with a thesis De Principio Individui (On the Principle of the Individual) which:-

... emphasised the existential value of the individual, who is not to be explained either by matter alone or by form alone but rather by his whole being.

In this there is the beginning of his notion of "monad". Leibniz then went to Jena to spend the summer term of 1663.

At Jena the professor of mathematics was Erhard Weigel but Weigel was also a philosopher and through him Leibniz began to understand the importance of the method of mathematical proof for subjects such as logic and philosophy. Weigel believed that number was the fundamental concept of the universe and his ideas were to have considerable influence of Leibniz. By October 1663 Leibniz was back in Leipzig starting his studies towards a doctorate in law. He was awarded his Master's Degree in philosophy for a dissertation which combined aspects of philosophy and law studying relations in these subjects with mathematical ideas that he had learnt from Weigel. A few days after Leibniz presented his dissertation, his mother died.

After being awarded a bachelor's degree in law, Leibniz worked on his  habilitation in philosophy. His work was to be published in 1666 as Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (Dissertation on the combinatorial art). In this work Leibniz aimed to reduce all reasoning and discovery to a combination of basic elements such as numbers, letters, sounds and colours.

Despite his growing reputation and acknowledged scholarship, Leibniz was refused the doctorate in law at Leipzig. It is a little unclear why this happened. It is likely that, as one of the younger candidates and there only being twelve law tutorships available, he would be expected to wait another year. However, there is also a story that the Dean's wife persuaded the Dean to argue against Leibniz, for some unexplained reason. Leibniz was not prepared to accept any delay and he went immediately to the University of Altdorf where he received a doctorate in law in February 1667 for his dissertation De Casibus Perplexis (On Perplexing Cases).

Leibniz declined the promise of a chair at Altdorf because he had very different things in view. He served as secretary to the Nuremberg alchemical society for a while (see [188]) then he met Baron Johann Christian von Boineburg. By November 1667 Leibniz was living in Frankfurt, employed by Boineburg. During the next few years Leibniz undertook a variety of different projects, scientific, literary and political. He also continued his law career taking up residence at the courts of Mainz before 1670. One of his tasks there, undertaken for the Elector of Mainz, was to improve the Roman civil law code for Mainz but:-

Leibniz was also occupied by turns as Boineburg's secretary, assistant, librarian, lawyer and advisor, while at the same time a personal friend of the Baron and his family.

Boineburg was a Catholic while Leibniz was a Lutheran but Leibniz had as one of his lifelong aims the reunification of the Christian Churches and :-

... with Boineburg's encouragement, he drafted a number of monographs on religious topics, mostly to do with points at issue between the churches...

Another of Leibniz's lifelong aims was to collate all human knowledge. Certainly he saw his work on Roman civil law as part of this scheme and as another part of this scheme, Leibniz tried to bring the work of the learned societies together to coordinate research. Leibniz began to study motion, and although he had in mind the problem of explaining the results of  Wren and  Huygens on elastic collisions, he began with abstract ideas of motion. In 1671 he published Hypothesis Physica Nova (New Physical Hypothesis). In this work he claimed, as had  Kepler, that movement depends on the action of a spirit. He communicated with Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society of London, and dedicated some of his scientific works to The Royal Society and the Paris Academy. Leibniz was also in contact with  Carcavi, the Royal Librarian in Paris. As Ross explains in :-

Although Leibniz's interests were clearly developing in a scientific direction, he still hankered after a literary career. All his life he prided himself on his poetry (mostly Latin), and boasted that he could recite the bulk of  Virgil's "Aeneid" by heart. During this time with Boineburg he would have passed for a typical late Renaissance humanist.

Leibniz wished to visit Paris to make more scientific contacts. He had begun construction of a calculating machine which he hoped would be of interest. He formed a political plan to try to persuade the French to attack Egypt and this proved the means of his visiting Paris. In 1672 Leibniz went to Paris on behalf of Boineburg to try to use his plan to divert Louis XIV from attacking German areas. His first object in Paris was to make contact with the French government but, while waiting for such an opportunity, Leibniz made contact with mathematicians and philosophers there, in particular  Arnauld and  Malebranche, discussing with  Arnauld a variety of topics but particularly church reunification.

In Paris Leibniz studied mathematics and physics under Christiaan  Huygens beginning in the autumn of 1672. On  Huygens' advice, Leibniz read  Saint-Vincent's work on summing series and made some discoveries of his own in this area. Also in the autumn of 1672, Boineburg's son was sent to Paris to study under Leibniz which meant that his financial support was secure. Accompanying Boineburg's son was Boineburg's nephew on a diplomatic mission to try to persuade Louis XIV to set up a peace congress. Boineburg died on 15 December but Leibniz continued to be supported by the Boineburg family.

In January 1673 Leibniz and Boineburg's nephew went to England to try the same peace mission, the French one having failed. Leibniz visited the Royal Society, and demonstrated his incomplete calculating machine. He also talked with  Hooke,  Boyle and  Pell. While explaining his results on series to  Pell, he was told that these were to be found in a book by  Mouton. The next day he consulted  Mouton's book and found that  Pell was correct. At the meeting of the Royal Society on 15 February, which Leibniz did not attend,  Hooke made some unfavourable comments on Leibniz's calculating machine. Leibniz returned to Paris on hearing that the Elector of Mainz had died. Leibniz realised that his knowledge of mathematics was less than he would have liked so he redoubled his efforts on the subject.

The Royal Society of London elected Leibniz a fellow on 19 April 1673. Leibniz met  Ozanam and solved one of his problems. He also met again with  Huygens who gave him a reading list including works by  Pascal,  Fabri,  Gregory,  Saint-Vincent,  Descartes and  Sluze. He began to study the geometry of  infinitesimals and wrote to Oldenburg at the Royal Society in 1674. Oldenburg replied that  Newton and  Gregory had found general methods. Leibniz was, however, not in the best of favours with the Royal Society since he had not kept his promise of finishing his mechanical calculating machine. Nor was Oldenburg to know that Leibniz had changed from the rather ordinary mathematician who visited London, into a creative mathematical genius. In August 1675  Tschirnhaus arrived in Paris and he formed a close friendship with Leibniz which proved very mathematically profitable to both.

It was during this period in Paris that Leibniz developed the basic features of his version of the calculus. In 1673 he was still struggling to develop a good notation for his calculus and his first calculations were clumsy. On 21 November 1675 he wrote a manuscript using the f(x) dx notation for the first time. In the same manuscript the product rule for differentiation is given. By autumn 1676 Leibniz discovered the familiar d(xn) = nxn-1dx for both integral and fractional n.

 Newton wrote a letter to Leibniz, through Oldenburg, which took some time to reach him. The letter listed many of  Newton's results but it did not describe his methods. Leibniz replied immediately but  Newton, not realising that his letter had taken a long time to reach Leibniz, thought he had had six weeks to work on his reply. Certainly one of the consequences of  Newton's letter was that Leibniz realised he must quickly publish a fuller account of his own methods.

 Newton wrote a second letter to Leibniz on 24 October 1676 which did not reach Leibniz until June 1677 by which time Leibniz was in Hanover. This second letter, although polite in tone, was clearly written by  Newton believing that Leibniz had stolen his methods. In his reply Leibniz gave some details of the principles of his differential calculus including the rule for differentiating a function of a function.

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