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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm. Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig on July 1, 1646. Leibniz's father taught moral philosophy (ethics) at the university. His third wife, Katherine Schmuck, Leibniz's mother, was the daughter of an eminent law professor. Family traditions on both sides predicted Leibniz's philosophical and legal activities. When Gottfried was baptized and the priest took the baby in his arms, he raised his head and opened his eyes. Seeing this as an omen, his father, Friedrich Leibniz, in his notes predicted to his son "doing miraculous things." He did not live to see the fulfillment of his prophecy and died when the boy was not even seven years old. Leibniz's mother, whom contemporaries call an intelligent and practical woman, taking care of her son's education, sent him to Nicolai's school, which was considered the best in Leipzig at that time. Gottfried spent whole days sitting in his father's library. He read Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Descartes indiscriminately. Gottfried was not yet fourteen years old when he amazed his school teachers by showing a talent that no one suspected in him. He turned out to be a poet - according to the then concepts, a true poet could only write in Latin or Greek. At the age of fifteen, Gottfried became a student at the University of Leipzig. In terms of his preparation, he far surpassed many older students. True, the nature of his work was still extremely versatile, one might even say disorderly. He read everything indiscriminately, theological treatises as well as medical ones. Officially, Leibniz was enrolled in the Faculty of Law, but the special circle of legal sciences far from satisfied him. In addition to lectures on jurisprudence, he diligently attended many others, especially in philosophy and mathematics. Wanting to develop his mathematical education, Gottfried went to Jena, where the famous mathematician Weigel lived at that time. In addition to the mathematician Weigel, Leibniz also listened here to some jurists and the historian Bosius. Returning to Leipzig, Leibniz brilliantly passed the exam for a master's degree in "liberal arts and world wisdom", that is, literature and philosophy. Gottfried at that time was not even eighteen years old. Soon after the master's exam, he suffered a heavy grief: he lost his mother. The next year, returning to mathematics for a while, he wrote "Discourse on Combinatorial Art". In the autumn of 1666, Leibniz left for Altdorf, the university town of the small Nuremberg Republic, which consisted of seven cities and several towns and villages. Gottfried had special reasons to love Nuremberg: the name of this republic was associated with the memory of his first serious success in life. Here, on November 5, 1666, Leibniz brilliantly defended his doctoral dissertation "On Entangled Matters". In 1667, Gottfried went to Mainz to the elector, to whom he was immediately introduced. Having familiarized himself with the works and with Leibniz personally, the elector invited the young scientist to take part in the reform undertaken: the elector tried to draw up a new code of laws. For five years Leibniz held a prominent position at the Mainz court. This period in his life was a time of lively literary activity: Leibniz wrote a number of works of philosophical and political content. On March 18, 1672, Leibniz left for France on an important diplomatic mission. In addition, Leibniz also pursued purely scientific goals. For a long time he had wanted to supplement his mathematical education with acquaintance with French and English scientists, and dreamed of traveling to Paris and London. Leibniz's diplomatic mission did not bring immediate results, but scientifically the trip turned out to be extremely successful. Acquaintance with the Parisian mathematicians in the shortest possible time delivered to Leibniz the information without which, for all his genius, he could never have achieved anything truly great in the field of mathematics. The school of Fermat, Pascal and Descartes was necessary for the future inventor of differential calculus. In one of his letters, Leibniz says that, after Galileo and Descartes, he owes his mathematical education most of all to Huygens. From conversations with him, from reading his writings and the treatises indicated by him, Leibniz saw all the insignificance of his previous mathematical knowledge. “Suddenly I was enlightened,” writes Leibniz, “and unexpectedly for myself and others who did not know at all that I was new to this matter, I made many discoveries.” By the way, even at that time Leibniz discovered a remarkable theorem, according to which the number expressing the ratio of the circumference to the diameter can be expressed in a very simple infinite series. Acquaintance with the writings of Pascal led Leibniz to the idea of improving some of the theoretical positions and practical discoveries of the French philosopher. Pascal's arithmetic triangle and his arithmetic machine equally occupied Leibniz's mind. He spent a lot of work and a lot of money to improve the arithmetic machine. While Pascal's machine performed directly only two simple operations - addition and subtraction, the model invented by Leibniz turned out to be suitable for multiplication, division, raising to a power and taking a root, at least square and cubic. In 1673, Leibniz presented the model to the Paris Academy of Sciences. "By means of the Leibniz machine, any boy can perform the most difficult calculations," one of the French scientists said about this invention. Thanks to the invention of the new arithmetic machine, Leibniz became a foreign member of the London Academy. For Leibniz, real mathematics lessons began only after visiting London. The Royal Society of London could at that time be proud of its membership. Such scientists as Boyle and Hooke in the field of chemistry and physics, Wren, Wallis, Newton in the field of mathematics, could compete with the Parisian school, and Leibniz, despite some training he received in Paris, often recognized himself in front of them in the position of a student. On his return to Paris, Leibniz divided his time between studies in mathematics and works of a philosophical nature. The mathematical direction more and more prevailed in him over the legal one, the exact sciences now attracted him more than the dialectic of the Roman lawyers and scholastics. In the last year of his stay in Paris in 1676, Leibniz worked out the first foundations of the great mathematical method known as "calculus". Exactly the same method was invented about 1665 by Newton; but the basic principles from which the two inventors proceeded were different, and, moreover, Leibniz could have only the vaguest idea of Newton's method, which was not published at that time. The facts convincingly prove that although Leibniz did not know about the method of fluxions, he was led to the discovery by Newton's letters. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Leibniz's discovery, in terms of generality, convenience of notation, and detailed development of the method, became a means of analysis much more powerful and popular than Newton's method of fluxions. Even Newton's compatriots, who for a long time preferred the method of fluxions out of national vanity, gradually adopted the more convenient notation of Leibniz; as for the Germans and the French, they even paid too little attention to Newton's method, which in other cases has retained its significance to the present day. After the first discoveries in the field of differential calculus, Leibniz had to interrupt his scientific studies: he received an invitation to Hannover and did not consider it possible to refuse just because his own financial situation in Paris had become precarious. On the way back, Leibniz visited Holland. In November 1676 he came to The Hague, mainly to see the famous philosopher Spinoza. By that time, the main features of the philosophical teaching of Leibniz himself had already been expressed in the differential calculus discovered by him and in the views expressed back in Paris on the question of good and evil, that is, on the basic concepts of morality. The mathematical method of Leibniz is in close connection with his later theory of monads - infinitesimal elements from which he tried to build the universe. Leibniz, in contrast to Pascal, who saw evil and suffering everywhere in life, demanding only Christian humility and patience, does not deny the existence of evil, but tries to prove that, for all that, our world is the best possible world. Mathematical analogy, the application of the theory of largest and smallest quantities to the moral field, gave Leibniz what he considered a guiding thread in moral philosophy. He tried to prove that there is a certain relative maximum of good in the world and that evil itself is an inevitable condition for the existence of this maximum of good. Whether this idea is false or true is another question, but its connection with the mathematical works of Leibniz is obvious. In the history of philosophy, Leibniz's teaching is of great importance as the first attempt to build a system based on the idea of continuity and the idea of infinitely small changes, closely related to it. A careful study of Leibniz's philosophy forces us to recognize in it the progenitor of the latest evolutionary hypotheses, and even the ethical side of Leibniz's teaching is closely related to the theories of Darwin and Spencer. Arriving in Hanover, Leibniz took the position of librarian offered to him by Duke Johann Friedrich. Like most of the then monarchs, the Duke of Hanover was interested in alchemy, and, on his behalf, Leibniz undertook various experiments. Leibniz's political activities largely distracted him from mathematics. Nevertheless, he devoted all his free time to processing the differential calculus he invented, and between 1677 and 1684 managed to create a whole new branch of mathematics. A significant event for his scientific studies was the foundation in Leipzig of the first German scientific journal, Proceedings of Scientists, published under the editorship of Leibniz's university friend Otto Menger. Leibniz became one of the main collaborators and, one might even say, the soul of this publication. In the first book he published his theorem on the expression of the ratio of the circumference to the diameter by means of an infinite series; in another treatise, he first introduced into mathematics the so-called "exponential equations"; then he published a simplified method for calculating compound interest and annuities and much more. Finally, in 1684, Leibniz published in the same journal a systematic exposition of the principles of differential calculus. All these treatises, especially the last one, published almost three years before the publication of the first edition of Newton's Principia, gave science such a tremendous impetus that at present it is difficult even to appreciate the full significance of the reform made by Leibniz in the field of mathematics. What was vaguely imagined to the minds of the best French and English mathematicians, with the exception of Newton with his method of fluxions, suddenly became clear, distinct and generally accessible, which cannot be said about Newton's brilliant method. In the field of mechanics, Leibniz, with the help of his differential calculus, easily established the concept of the so-called living force. Leibniz's views led to a theorem that became the foundation of all dynamics. This theorem says that the increment of the living force of the system is equal to the work produced by this moving system. Knowing, for example, the mass and speed of a falling body, we can calculate the work done by it during the fall. Shortly after the accession to the throne of Hanover, Duke Ernst August Leibniz was appointed official historiographer of the Hanoverian house. Leibniz himself invented this work for himself, for which he later had the opportunity to repent. In the summer of 1688, Leibniz arrived in Vienna. In addition to working in the local archives and in the imperial library, he pursued both diplomatic and purely personal goals. Leibniz dedicated the spring of 1689 to travel. He visited Venice, Modena, Rome, Florence and Naples. Everything was good in the scientist's life - only "smallness" was missing - love! But Leibniz was lucky here too. He fell in love with one of the best German women - the first queen of Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, daughter of the Hanoverian Duchess Sophia. When Leibniz entered the Hanoverian service in 1680, the duchess entrusted him with the education of his twelve-year-old daughter. Four years later, the young girl married the Brandenburg prince Friedrich III, who later became King Frederick I. The young did not get along with the Hanoverian duke and, after living in Hanover for two years, secretly left for Kassel. In 1688, Frederick III came to the throne, becoming the Elector of Brandenburg. He was a vain, empty man who loved luxury and splendor. Serious, thoughtful, dreamy Sophia Charlotte could not bear the empty and meaningless court life. She remembered Leibniz as a dear, beloved teacher; circumstances favored a new, stronger rapprochement. An active correspondence began between her and Leibniz. She stopped only for the duration of their frequent and lengthy visits. In Berlin and Lützenburg, Leibniz often spent whole months near the queen. In the letters of the queen, with all her restraint, moral purity and awareness of her duty to her husband, who never appreciated and did not understand her, a strong feeling constantly erupts in these letters. The founding of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin finally brought Leibniz closer to the queen. The husband of Sophia Charlotte had little interest in Leibniz's philosophy, but the project of founding an academy of sciences seemed interesting to him. On March 18, 1700, Frederick III signed a decree establishing the academy and observatory. On July 11 of the same year, on Friedrich's birthday, the Berlin Academy of Sciences was inaugurated and Leibniz was appointed its first president. The early years of the 18th century were the happiest era in Leibniz's life. In 1700 he was fifty-four years old. He was at the zenith of his glory, he did not have to think about daily bread. The scientist was independent, could safely indulge in his favorite philosophical pursuits. And, most importantly, Leibniz's life was warmed by the high, pure love of a woman - quite worthy of his mind, gentle and meek, without excessive sensitivity, which is characteristic of many German women, who looked at the world simply and clearly. The love of such a woman, philosophical conversations with her, reading the works of other philosophers, especially Bayle - all this could not but affect the activities of Leibniz himself. Just at the time when Leibniz renewed contact with his former student, he was working on a system of "pre-established harmony" (1693-1696). Conversations with Sophia Charlotte about Bayle's skeptical reasoning led him to the idea of writing a full exposition of his own system. He worked on "Monadology" and on "Theodicy"; the influence of the great female soul was directly reflected in the last work. However, Queen Sophia Charlotte did not live to see the end of this work. She slowly burned out from a chronic illness and long before her death got used to the idea of the possibility of dying young. In early 1705, Queen Sophia Charlotte went to visit her mother. Leibniz, contrary to his custom, could not accompany her. On the way, she caught a cold and after a short illness on February 1, 1705, unexpectedly for everyone, she died. Leibniz was overcome with grief. For the only time in his life, his usual peace of mind changed. With great difficulty, he returned to work. Leibniz was over fifty years old when he first met, in July 1697, Peter the Great, then a young man who had taken a trip to Holland to study maritime affairs. Their new date took place in October 1711. Although their meetings were brief, they were significant in their consequences. Leibniz then, among other things, sketched out a plan for the reform of education and a project for the establishment of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the autumn of the following year, Peter I arrived in Karlsbad. Here Leibniz spent a long time with him and went with the tsar to Teplitz and Dresden. During this journey, the plan of the Academy of Sciences was worked out in every detail. Peter I then accepted the philosopher into the Russian service and assigned him a pension of 2000 guilders. Leibniz was extremely pleased with the established relationship with Peter I. "Protection of the sciences has always been my main goal," he wrote, "only there was a lack of a great monarch who would be sufficiently interested in this matter." The last time Leibniz saw Peter shortly before his death - in 1716. Leibniz spent the last two years of his life in constant physical suffering. He died November 14, 1716. Author: Samin D.K.
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