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Descartes was a philosopher who invented the application of algebra to geometry from which we now have Cartesian geometry.
Descartes was educated at the Jesuit academy of La Flèche in traditional Aristotelian philosophy. He learnt mathematics from the books of Clavius. While in the school he was granted permission to remain in bed until 11 o'clock in the morning, a custom he maintained until the year of his death.
Descartes received a law degree from the University of Poitiers (1616) then travelled through Europe as a volunteer in a Dutch and then a Bavarian army.
In 1620 he started studying mathematics and mechanics under the Dutch scientist Isaac Beeckman, and began to seek a unified science of nature. In 1628 he was encouraged to develop his philosophical system. Soon after he settled in Holland and began work on his first major treatise, Rules for the Direction of the Mind . This work was never completed and was published 50 years after his death.
Best known as a philosopher, his work Meditations on First Philosophy , was first published in 1641. He aimed to provide a foundation for the new mechanical physics, based on the Copernican system, which tried to explain everything in the physical world solely by the shapes, sizes, and motions of bodies.
Descartes wrote a treatise on science under the title Discours de la méthod pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences . One appendix to this work, La géométrie , includes his application of algebra to geometry from which we now have Cartesian geometry. The ideas may have come from earlier work of Oresme.
In 1649 Queen Christina of Sweden persuaded Descartes to go to Stockholm. However the Queen wanted to draw tangents at 5 a.m. and Descartes broke the habit of his lifetime of getting up at 11 o'clock. After only a few months in the cold northern climate, walking to the palace for 5 o'clock every morning, he died of pneumonia.
References elsewhere in this archive:
Tell me about Descartes' geometric solution of a quadratic equation
Among the curves investigated by Descartes were the Cartesian ovals, the Cycloid, the Equiangular spiral, the Folium of Descartes and the (so-called) Trident of Newton.
Other Web sites:
Rice University, USA
Clarke University, USA
References:
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