(1596-1650)

Mathematician

CMPE220 FALL 2008

ÖZGÜR
MUSTAFA
SUCU
2006102002
 Background Information
• Born March 31, 1596 in France
• Mother died of Tuberculosis when he was
1 year old
• Father was a judge in the High Court of
Justice
•At age 10 attended the Jesuit College
Royal Henry-Le-Grand
•Delicate health issues-permitted to lie in
bed till late in the mornings
• Graduated and went to the University of
Poitiers with a law degree in 1616, but
never practiced law
 Background Continued…

• In the army for a couple

years

• Traveled for 5 years

• Devoted the rest of his life

to philosophy and
mathematics

•Published a lot of his works

 Contributions

• Systematization of analytic geometry

• First to attempt to classify curves
according to the types of equations that
produce them
• Theory of equations
•Law of Conservation of Momentum
• Last letters of the alphabet are
unknown quantities and first letters are
known ones
• Rule of Signs
•Exponential notation
•Cartesian geometry
 MORE DETAILED...
•As the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system,
Decartes founded analytic geometry, the bridge between
algebra and geometry, crucial to the invention of calculus
and analysis.
•Descartes' reflections on mind and mechanism began the
strain of Western thought that much later, impelled by
invention of the electronic computer and by the possibility of
machine intelligence, blossomed into the Turing test and
related thought.
•Descartes' theory provided the basis for the calculus of Newton
and Leibniz, by applying infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line
problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern
mathematics.
•Descartes' rule of signs is also a commonly used method to
determine the number of positive and negative zeros of a
polynomial.
•He invented the notation which uses superscripts to show the
powers or exponents, for example the 2 used in x2 to indicate
squaring.
Cartesian geometry

vector space

definition of the plane

distance problems

the dot product, to get the angle of two vectors

the cross product, to get a perpendicular vector of two known

vectors (and also their spatial volume)

intersection problems
 The Cartesian Coordinate System

Descartes developed the coordinate plane system which is widely used today
 Tangents to Curves

Descartes did a lot of work about tangents to curves. He illustrated his theory by giving the
general rule for drawing tangents and normals with a circle.
 In Closing…

• Died at Stockholm, Sweden on

February 11, 1650 of pneumonia
• “Founder of Modern Philosophy”
• “Father of Modern Mathematics”
• French philosopher, scientist, and
mathematician
• Most famous for finding analytical
geometry
• Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am)
 REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_geometry

student.valpo.edu/kgross/portfolio/Rene

%20Descartes.ppt
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