Works
Van Schooten's 1649 Latin translation of and commentary on Descartes' Géométrie was valuable in that it made the work comprensible to the broader mathematical community, and thus was responsible for the spread of analytic geometry to the world. Over the next decade he enlisted the aid of other mathematicians of the time, de Beaune, Hudde, Heuraet, de Witt and expanded the commentaries to two volumes, published in 1659 and 1661. This edition and its extensive commentaries was far more influential than the 1649 edition. It was this edition that Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton knew.
Van Schooten was one of the first to suggest, in exercises published in 1657, that these ideas be extended to three-dimensional space. Van Schooten's efforts also made Leiden the centre of the mathematical community for a short period in the middle of the seventeenth century.
Read more about this topic: Frans Van Schooten
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 107:23-4.
“I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The family that perseveres in good works will surely have an abundance of blessings.”
—Chinese proverb.