While Newton first formalized the calculus as an aid in solving geometric problems, the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz created the notations for differentiation and integration we now know today. The chain and product rules we use to ease the calculation of derivatives can also be credited to Leibniz. While a bitter controversy raged between the two figures, after Leibniz, the notation of calculus was then virtually indistinguishable from its current form. However it was Leonhard Euler who first applied analysis to the trigonometric functions. He completed the transition of Western mathematics from the Apollonian study of solid shapes as numbers and distances to a Faustian pursuit of abstract functions.
For it was a uniquely Faustian enterprise to voyage into the Cartesian Sea.
And in the Cartesian Sea, there would be many strange functions indeed…
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