"J. M. Child... has made a searching study of Barrow and has arrived at startling conclusions on the historical question relating to the first invention of the calculus. He places his conclusions in italics in the first sentence as follows Isaac Barrow was the first inventor of the Infinitesimal Calculus... Before entering upon an examination of the evidence brought forth by Child it may be of interest to review a similar claim set up for another man as inventor of the calculus... Fermat was declared to be the first inventor of the calculus by Lagrange, Laplace, and apparently also by P. Paul Tannery, than whom no more distinguished mathematical triumvirate can easily be found. ...Dinostratus and Barrow were clever men, but it seems to us that they did not create what by common agreement of mathematicians has been designated by the term differential and integral calculus. Two processes yielding equivalent results are not necessarily the same. It appears to us that what can be said of Barrow is that he worked out a set of geometric theorems suggesting to us constructions by which we can find lines, areas and volumes whose magnitudes are ordinarily found by the analytical processes of the calculus. But to say that Barrow invented a differential and integral calculus is to do violence to the habit of mathematical thought and expression of over two centuries. The invention rightly belongs to Newton and Leibniz."
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University of Cambridge alumniFellows of the Royal SocietyUniversity of Cambridge facultyTheologians from EnglandMathematicians from England
Original Language: English
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Sources
Florian Cajori, "Who was the First Inventor of Calculus", The American Mathematical Monthly (1919) Vol. 26
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Barrow
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Isaac Barrow
Isaac Barrow (October 1630 β 4 May 1677) was an English Christian theologian, and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of ; in particular, for the discovery of the .
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