Philosopher, mathematician and physicist — René Descartes (La Haye en Touraine, 1596 – Stockholm, 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, regarded as one of the fathers of modern scientific thought. In mathematics he developed analytic geometry, uniting algebra and geometry through the coordinate system that bears his name and making it possible to describe curves by means of equations. In physics he proposed a mechanistic conception of nature, explaining phenomena through matter and motion, and formulated an early version of the principle of inertia later refined by Newton. He worked out laws governing collisions and a theory of vortices to explain planetary motion, later superseded by Newtonian gravitation. His method, founded on systematic doubt and reason, profoundly influenced all subsequent science.
Trivia
Summoned to the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, Descartes was made to give philosophy lessons at five in the morning in the depths of winter; unused to the cold and the early hours, he fell ill with pneumonia and died in Stockholm a few months later.
Theories and contributions
- Analytic geometry — Associating points in the plane with pairs of coordinates , so that curves can be represented by algebraic equations.
- Principle of inertia (Cartesian form) — A body keeps its state of rectilinear motion or rest until an external cause acts to change it.
- Laws of collisions — Early attempts to quantify the conservation of “motion” in collisions between bodies, forerunners of the conservation principles.
Appears in chapters
Linked atoms
1 linked atoms.