Who was Leibniz?
Let me tell you about Leibniz. Leibniz invented the calculus, invented binary arithmetic, a superb mechanical calculator, clearly envisioned symbolic logic, gave the name to topology (analysis situs) and combinatorics, discovered Wilson’s theorem (a primality test; see Dantzig, Number, The Language of Science), etc. etc. etc. Newton was a great physicist, but he was definitely inferior to Leibniz both as a mathematician and as a philosopher. And Newton was a rotten human being—so much so that Djerassi and Pinner call their recent book Newton’s Darkness. Leibniz invented the calculus, published it, wrote letter after letter to continental mathematicians to explain it to them, initially received all the credit for this from his contemporaries, and then was astonished to learn that Newton, who had never published a word on the subject, claimed that Leibniz had stolen it all from him. Leibniz could hardly take Newton seriously! But it was Newton who won, not Leibniz. Newton bragged that
