Memorabilia Mathematica

Abstract

Prior to the year 1650, the state of mathematics was at a low ebb. But the middle of the seventeenth century may be said to have ushered in a new era in mathematical learning. On the Continent, Descarte's geometry appeared in 1637, and Cavalieri's method of indivisibles, introduced a year or two later, presaged the blossoming of the calculus. In England, John Wallis of Oxford and Isaac Barrow of Cambridge were to form a connecting link between Descartes and Cavalieri, on the one hand, and Isaac Newton on the other.