Calculus Timeline

PersonDateMathematical Discovery
Pythagoras -5** discovered irrationals like square root of 2
Archimedes -2** various volumes and surface areas (parabola, cone, sphere)
center of gravity, integration by exhaustion
Thabit ibn-Qurra 8** integral of square root of x
al-Biruni 10** instantaneous velocity and acceleration
Grégorie de St Vincent 1620 limit notion, area of hyperbola
Cavalieri 1630 axioms for area
Fermat 1630 minima & maxima
Napier, Sarasa 1610, 1640 log
Wallis 1650 series
Pascal 1650 integrals of polynomials
Leibniz & Newton 1670 infinitesimal calculus
Bernoulli 1680 differential equations
L'Hospital 1690 L'Hospital's rule for finding limits
Rolles 1690 Mean Value Theorem for derivative
Taylor 1710-40 Taylor series (infinite polynomials)
Euler 1750 curvature of surfaces, many other results
Lagrange 1790 Lagrange method
Fourier 1800 Fourier series (approx by infinite trig series)
Bolzano 1810 formal definition of limits and continuity
Cauchy 1820 formal definition of limits and continuity, residue calculus
Weierstrass 1840 uniform convergence
Riemann 1850 definition of integral, differential geometry
Cantor 1870 sets
Hermite 1870 e is transcendental
Lindemann 1880 pi is transcendental
Poincaré 1890 topology
Lebesgue 1900 Lebesgue integral

Last update: 2009 January 22