Location: room 611 of the Wiskunde building (campus De Uithof) Budapestlaan 6, Utrecht.

Date and time: Thursday, April 29, 2010 15:30-16:30. The lecture is preceded by coffee, tea, and cookies from 15.00 to 15.30 hour in the same room.

Historical perspective on the early  development and application of the calculus


Michael Nauenberg

(University of California, Santa Cruz)

Abstract: The calculus introduced in the 17-th century was based on differential quantities that lacked rigorous mathematical justification - Bishop Berkeley called them "ghosts of departed quantities". But despite this deficiency, this calculus was applied very successfully to mathematical and physical problems. As an example, some of the contributions of Leibniz, Hermann, the Bernoulli brothers and Varignon will be discussed. Following their calculations, which combined geometrical and analytic methods, I will also explain why the lack of rigor was not a practical problem in these early  applications of differentials.

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