Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
(1596-1650) Mathematician
By Kim Gross
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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

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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

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Influences

• Isaac Beeckman
• Plato
• Aristotle
• Aquinas
• Ockman

• Suarez
• Mersenne
• Sextus Empiricus
• Michel de Montaigne

Beeckman
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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

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The Cartesian Coordinate System
Descartes developed the coordinate plane system
which is widely used today
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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.
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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)

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THE END