Questions tagged [descartes]
René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.
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Was not chess notation an earlier sort of Cartesian Coordinates?
I realize modern algebraic notation is fairly new but for as long as there have been recorded chess games, every square I think was referred to using two coordinates, in old descriptive notation a ...
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Exact source that Descartes had observed that $V-E+F=2$ for planar graphs
In recent literature, I have read that René Descartes had observed that $V-E+F=2$ for planar graphs. Is there any image of that page of book or article of Descartes?
Seeing real page that contains the ...
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Which was the first coordinate system? And why was it used?
I've been researching the motivation behind the invention of the Cartesian Co-ordinate system. But I was wondering, which coordinate system was the first to be invented? Was it the Spherical Co-...
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Fourth powers and quartic equations before Descartes
How did mathematicians interpret quartic equations and fourth powers before Descartes propose to perform elementary arithmetic on line segments?
I ask this because it seems strange to me that ...
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Did Descartes leave solving the quintic as an exercise to his readers?
In this document by Jim Brown it is claimed (on Section 3, pg 5) that:
[Descartes] believed that all polynomials of degree $>4$ could be solved with the same methods as had been applied to the ...
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Historically, how did René Descartes's works affect the invention of calculus?
When the "Cartesian coordinate system" was discovered By René Descartes, Algebra and Geometry were connected. How exactly did that affect Newton and Leibniz in the invention of what we know ...
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Why did Rene Descartes go to Sweden?
The year before he died, mathematician Rene Descartes accepted an invitation to tutor the brilliant 19-year old Queen Christina of Sweden (some thirty years younger). He apparently died from the ...
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