Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. The Mathematical Gazette
  4. Volume 15 Issue 214
Journal Home
Refine listing

Refine listing

Access:
Publication date:

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×
< Back to all issues

Volume 15 - Issue 214 - July 1931

Contents

Page 1 of 2

Research Article

  • The Teaching of Differentials

  • E. G. Phillips
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    03 November 2016, pp. 401-403

  • Most mathematicians are aware of the unhappy controversy between Newton and Leibniz about the priority of the discovery of the Infinitesimal Calculus. This controversy lasted from 1707 to 1716, and, as Rouse Ball writes, “ it occupies a place in the scientific history of the early years of the eighteenth century quite disproportionate to its true importance”. It is, however, remarkable that this controversy is to a large extent responsible for the fact that even to-day much of the teaching of Elementary Calculus in this country is given in an unsatisfactory manner. The notation of differentials was invented by Leibniz in 1675, at about the same time as Newton invented his “ fluxions”. The bitterness of the aftermath of that unhappy controversy, however, resulted in the almost complete disappearance of the differential from English mathematics.

Other

Mathematical Notes

Reviews

Page 1 of 2