Gottfried Leibniz was both an outstanding philosopher and a great mathematician. He was born in Leipzig, Germany, and entered university at the age of fifteen. He became absorbed by the works of the great scientists and thinkers such as Descartes, Newton, Pascal and Boyle, and in 1667 obtained a position at the court of the Elector of Mainz. Here he drafted schemes for the unification of the churches and devised plans to preserve the peace of Europe (a cause he was devoted to throughout his life). It was during a diplomatic trip to Paris that Leibniz began to concentrate on maths and in 1672 he designed an advanced calculating machine that could multiply, extract roots and divide. In 1673 he moved to London where he became involved in a bitter dispute with Isaac Newton, each claiming to be the inventor of calculus. Although Newton undoubtedly discovered the techniques of calculus independently, it is Leibniz's notation that is invariably used today. In his philosophical writings, he is well known for arguing that the world is made of single units called 'monads' which form a hierarchy, the highest of which is God. Leibniz had an encyclopaedic mind spanning many areas of thought including optics, statistics, logic and mechanics. His work was never really recognized and much of it was never published. The last fifteen years of his life were tainted by the acrimonious dispute with Newton and he died a neglected man suffering from gout.
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