de Witt

Jan de Witt

Born: 24 Sept 1625 in Dordrecht, Netherlands
Died: 20 Aug 1672 in The Hague, Netherlands

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Jan de Witt was an associate of van Schooten and lived for a while in his house. His most important work was the first systematic development of the analytic geometry of the straight line and conic. It was published by van Schooten as part of his edition of Descartes's Géometrie (1660). The word directrix is due to de Witt.

References elsewhere in this archive:

De Witt showed how a transformation of the axes could be used to reduce the equation for a conic to canonical form. Tell me more about this

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. N Japikse, Johan de Witt (Amsterdam, 1915). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996