A Brief Biography of Gottfried Liebniz

Gottfried Liebniz was known as the last “Universal Genius” until Mr. Fitterer was born that is, but I am assigned to write this essay about Leibniz. Leibniz had many achievements in metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history. A French philosopher named Denis Diderot was even stunned by some of Leibniz’s work, “Perhaps never has a man read as much, studied as much, meditated more, and written more than Leibniz… What he has composed on the world, God, nature, and the soul is of the most sublime eloquence. If his ideas had been expressed with the flair of Plato, the philosopher of Leipzig would cede nothing to the philosopher of Athens.” as stated in one of his encyclopedia entries.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig, Germany, and went to a university at the age of 14, where his father was the professor of moral philosophy. He later attended Altdorf to earn his doctoral degree at the age of 20. Even though he was exceptionally talented leaving such universities, he was not recognized for his talents and spent the next 40 years in small positions. He later met Johann Christian, who introduced him to the archbishop of Mainz, Johann Philipp von Schonborn.
Leibniz had many contributions to math and science. He created his own form of Binary Arithmetic with an attempt to reduce complex ideas to there simplest forms. His binary representations are still used today in modern computers. He also created a calculating machine that he wanted to use to make an easier way to create fewer mistakes. The most important part of the machine was a geared-wheel that had numbers along its teeth that allowed multiplication by simply turning a handle; this simple piece was used in all calculators up until electronic calculators were created. Calculus was easily one of Leibniz’s most important contributions to math; his main purpose was to simplify the then complex math. He created two symbols that will forever be used in math. The ‘d’ notation for differentiation, and the other was the integral sign; used to find the areas under curves.
Some of Leibniz’s ideas were so complex they couldn’t be understood until the early 20th century. Leibniz also is now considered the creator of calculus, so was Newton, some say Leibniz plagiarized from Newton but was proven that Leibniz’s discoveries were completely original.