who invented calculus?
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Quoting from Wikipedia:\n\n"Calculus started making great strides in Europe towards the end of the early modern period and into the first years of the eighteenth century. This was a time of major innovation in Europe, making accessible answers to old questions. Calculus provided a new method in mathematical physics. Several mathematicians contributed to this breakthrough, notably John Wallis and Isaac Barrow. James Gregory proved a special case of the second fundamental theorem of calculus in 1668. In Japan at around this time, Seki Kowa also made some major discoveries in integral calculus.\n\nLeibniz and Newton pulled these ideas together into a coherent whole and they are usually credited with the probably independent and nearly simultaneous "invention" of calculus. Newton was the first to apply calculus to general physics and Leibniz developed much of the notation used in calculus today; he often spent days determining appropriate symbols for concepts. It was generations after Newton and Leibniz that Cauchy, Riemann, and other mathematicians finally put calculus on a rigorous basis, with the definition of the limit, and the formal definition of the Riemann integral."
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Calculus is a central branch of mathematics, developed from algebra and geometry. It is built on two major complementary ideas, both of which rely critically on the concept of limits. The first is differential calculus, which is concerned with the instantaneous rate of change of quantities with respect to other quantities, or more precisely, the local behavior of functions. This can be illustrated by the slope of a function's graph. The second is integral calculus, which studies the accumulation of quantities, such as areas under a curve, linear distance traveled, or volume displaced. These two processes act inversely to each other, a fact delivered conclusively by the fundamental theorem of calculus.\n\nExamples of typical differential calculus problems include:\n\nfinding the acceleration and velocity of a free-falling body at a particular moment. \nfinding the optimal number of units a company should produce to maximize their profit. \nExamples of integral calculus problems include:\n\nfinding areas and volumes \nfinding the amount of water pumped by a pump with a set power input but varying conditions of pumping losses and pressure \nfinding the amount of parking lot plowed by a snowplow of given power with varying rates of snowfall. \nToday, calculus is used in every branch of the physical sciences, in computer science, in statistics, and in engineering; in economics, business, and medicine; and as a general method whenever the goal is an optimal solution to a problem that can be given in mathematical form.\n\nFundamental theorem of calculus\nMain article: Fundamental theorem of calculus \nThe fundamental theorem of calculus states that differentiation and integration are, in a certain sense, inverse operations. More precisely, if one defines one function as the integral of another, continuous, function, then differentiating the newly defined function returns the function you started with. Furthermore, if you want to find the value of a definite integral, you usually do so by evaluating an antiderivative.\n\nHere is the mathematical formulation of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus: If a function f is continuous on the interval [a, b] and if F is a function whose derivative is f on the interval [a, b], then\n\n \nAlso, for every x in the interval [a, b], \n \nThis realization, made by both Newton and Leibniz, was key to the massive proliferation of analytic results after their work became known. The fundamental theorem provides an algebraic method of computing many definite integrals—without performing limit processes—by finding formulas for antiderivatives. It is also a prototype solution of a differential equation. Differential equations relate an unknown function to its derivatives, and are ubiquitous in the sciences.
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Look up Gauss. Story is he added up 1..100 in grade school and invented the n*(N+1)/2.
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I think the multiplication symbol was first thought up by the...Arabs. one of the anchient people from that time frame. I forgot exactly who, but the civilization that came up with Algebra is the same one who came up with the Multiplication function in mathmatics. This was before the Dark Ages in Europe.
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this may be somewhat subjective, eh?\n\n1) Euclid's work\n2) Isaac Newton's calculus\n3) ___________________ (open for discussion) The Pythagoreans? Archimedes? The development of Algebra from al-jah-bra...dang - i'm anxious to see the other answers
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Charles Babbage\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
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Did you know that The same Isacc Newton invented the Calculus and aclculus is the best technique currently applied by physics of all dimentions to get the most accurate answer by spliting down a large problem into many different small steps of the problem inorder to get the most accurate answer available. thus generating the most effective solution in the world of physics.\nhe has contributed much to the society of man in the physical perspective. ironically he didn't have any prior mthematical knowledge when young.
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Fermat, I think.  He wrote he had found a proof for this, but put a note in the margin that there wasn't enough room there for the proof.  And no-one could find the proof anywhere else in his notes and he died.  A fellow named Andrew Wiles worked for a long time to find the proof, and after some ill-fated public announcements I think the proof was finally completed.\n\nI hope this helps.
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Knowing trig makes learning calculus easier.
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history of PI~~\nthe symbol "π" for Archimedes' constant was first introduced in 1706 by William Jones when he published A New Introduction to Mathematics, although the same symbol had been used earlier to indicate the circumference of a circle. The notation became standard after it was adopted by Leonhard Euler. In either case, 'π' is the first letter of περιμετρος (perimetros), meaning 'measure around' in Greek
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I like Calculus. You learn how to think logically in order to solve problems.  Plus, in Calculus, you'll learn why some things in math are the way they are. For example, have you ever wondered why the area of a circle is pi times the radius squared? Well, in Calculus you'll learn why.
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Try this guy:\n\nhttp://dli.taft.cc.ca.us/mathvideo/Calculus/Calculas.htm
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I did check. It was John Napier. This used to be a very important name before calculators. To simplify multipling large numbers it was useful to first change the numbers to their logs add them together and then change back to decimals. \nRemember the law of logs/exponents that multiplying 10^2 * 10^3 = 10^5 ? Adding the exponents is the multipling the numbers. Slide rules work the same way.\nIn order for this to work he invented the scientific notation which splits a number into an exponent and mantissa.
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The history of maths or on a famous mathematician.
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John Harrison developed longitude.\n\nLatitude is a bit more difficult to determine and is mostly about mathematics but I believe mathematician Karl Gauss had something to do with it. But you should research that some more.
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There's a derivatives tutorial on the following page:\n\nhttp://www.karlscalculus.org/calculus.html#s4
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Calculus is a central branch of mathematics. The word stems from the nascent development of mathematics: the early Greeks used pebbles arranged in patterns to learn arithmetic and geometry, and the Latin word for "pebble" is "calculus."\n\nCalculus is built on two major complementary ideas, both of which rely critically on the concept of limits. The first is differential calculus, which is concerned with the instantaneous rate of change of quantities with respect to other quantities, or more precisely, the local behavior of functions. This can be illustrated by the slope of a function's graph. The second is integral calculus, which studies the accumulation of quantities, such as areas under a curve, linear distance traveled, or volume displaced. These two processes act inversely to each other, as shown by the fundamental theorem of calculus.\n\nExamples of typical differential calculus problems include:\n\nfinding the acceleration and velocity of a free-falling body at a particular moment. \nfinding the optimal number of units a company should produce to maximize its profit. \nExamples of integral calculus problems include:\n\nfinding areas and volumes \nfinding the amount of a liquid pumped by a pump with a set power input but varying conditions of pumping losses and pressure \nfinding the amount of parking lot plowed by a snowplow of given power with varying rates of snowfall.