Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Born on July 1, 1646 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz started his journey of contributions to mathematics and philosophy in Leipzig, Germany. Born shortly after the Thirty Year’s War, which left Germany in ruins, he was born into a pious Lutheran family. Before he was six years of age, Gottfried lost his father, Friedrich Leibniz, a professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and he was sent to an insufficient school. However, due to his father’s extensive library, he was able to educate himself along with his mother, Catharina Schmuck, the daughter of a Professor of law, and his uncle. At age 12, Gottfried taught himself how to read Latin and started on Greek, and before he was 20, he mastered the textbooks of mathematics, philosophy, theology, and law. Although, it wasn’t until he was enrolled into the University of Leipzig that he wanted make a difference. When Gottfried Leibniz entered the University of Leipzig, he was inspired by men such as, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and René Descartes. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree in law and shortly after obtaining his master’s degree in philosophy, his mother died. The University of Leipzig refused Leibniz a doctorate in law, so he immediately went to the University of Altdorf and obtained his doctorate. Within the next few years, Leibniz committed himself with a variety of projects, scientific, literary, and political. Some examples are his baccalaureate thesis, “On the Principle of the Individual”, appeared in May 1663. It was inspired by the theory that universals don’t have a reality but are just names. Also, “On the Art of Combination” he formulated the ancestor of some computers: “all reasoning, all discovery, verbal or not, is reducible to an ordered combination of elements, such as numbers, words, sounds, or colors.” Of the many contributions, such as these, he made miraculous improvements to mathematics as well. Late in 1675 Leibniz laid the foundations of