Timeline
1734 to 1799: attack, repair, and the Enlightenment
| Date | Event | Who | Where | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1734 | Berkeley publishes The Analyst; or A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician, in London and Dublin, in two non-identical texts | George Berkeley | London and Dublin | Source 310, Berkeley |
| 1734 | Jurin replies as 'Philalethes Cantabrigiensis' with Geometry No Friend to Infidelity; Robins, Walton, Pemberton, Bayes and others join in over the following decade | James Jurin, Benjamin Robins | London | Source 310, Berkeley; Source 311, Maclaurin |
| 1735 | Euler presents his solution of the Basel problem to the St Petersburg Academy: 1 + 1/4 + 1/9 + ... = pi^2/6. He is 28. Published as E41 in 1740 | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 322, Monks; Source 323, Bogart |
| 1736 | The Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series published in English, trans. John Colson | Isaac Newton, John Colson | London | Source 185, Newton; Source 192, Whiteside |
| 1738 | Du Chatelet submits her essay on the nature and propagation of fire to the Academie royale des sciences prize competition anonymously, because a submission known to be by a woman would not have been taken seriously. It does not win, and the Academie publishes it anyway | - | Paris | Source 69, Allen |
| April/May 1738 | Daniel Bernoulli's Hydrodynamica appears in print at Strasbourg; in October his father first mentions a rival Hydraulica to Euler | Daniel Bernoulli, Johann Bernoulli | Strasbourg / Basel | Source 333, Tou |
| 1740 | Emilie du Chatelet publishes Institutions de physique anonymously in Paris; the 1742 Amsterdam edition carries her name | Emilie du Chatelet | Paris | Source 332, Project Vox |
| 1740 | Simpson publishes the iteration x_{n+1} = x_n - f(x_n)/f (x_n) - the form in which "Newtons method" is taught | Thomas Simpson | London | Source 462, OConnor and Robertson |
| 1740 | Institutions de physique published anonymously, its frontispiece carrying portraits of Newton, Descartes and Leibniz; its last chapter openly attacks Mairan's 1728 memoire on forces vives | - | Paris | Source 68, Zinsser; Source 69, Allen |
| 1742 | Maclaurin publishes A Treatise of Fluxions, 2 vols., Edinburgh; the Preface states that Berkeley's Analyst 'first gave Occasion to the ensuing Treatise' | Colin Maclaurin, George Berkeley | Edinburgh | Source 311, Maclaurin |
| 1744 | Euler publishes Methodus inveniendi (E65), founding the calculus of variations and giving the first statement of the principle of least action | Leonhard Euler | Lausanne and Geneva | Source 323, Bogart |
| 1748 | Euler publishes Introductio in analysin infinitorum (E101): analysis becomes the study of functions. S.126 adopts pi; S.138 gives e^(v sqrt(-1)) = cos v + sqrt(-1) sin v | Leonhard Euler | Lausanne | Source 318, Euler; Source 325, Miller |
| 1748 | Agnesi publishes Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventu italiana in Milan: the first surviving mathematics book by a woman and the first textbook to cover differential and integral calculus together | Maria Gaetana Agnesi | Milan | Source 319, Agnesi; Source 327, O'Connor |
| 10 September 1749 | Emilie du Chatelet dies at Luneville, six days after childbirth, having raced to finish her Principia translation | Emilie du Chatelet | Luneville, Lorraine | Source 332, Project Vox |
| 26 September 1750 | Pope Benedict XIV writes to Agnesi offering her the chair of mathematics at Bologna; she accepts the honor and, on Truesdell's account, never goes | Maria Gaetana Agnesi | Rome / Bologna | Source 327, O'Connor; Source 340, Truesdell |
| 1755 | Euler's Institutiones calculi differentialis (E212) published at St Petersburg; written in 1748 | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 323, Bogart |
| 1755 | Euler introduces Delta for difference and Sigma for sum in one book, explicitly as a matched pair | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 451, Cajori |
| 1759 | Du Chatelet's complete French Principia, with her Exposition abregee du systeme du monde, published in Paris, arranged by Clairaut - ten years after her death, and still the only complete French translation | Emilie du Chatelet, Alexis-Claude Clairaut | Paris | Source 332, Project Vox |
| 1759 | Du Chatelet's translation and commentary on the Principia appears, ten years after her death, because Clairaut pressed the publisher Prault to bring it out and arranged for the illustrations to be finished | - | Paris | Source 68, Zinsser |
| c. 1760 | John Colson, translating Agnesi into English, renders la versiera as 'the Witch'; published posthumously in 1801 | John Colson, Maria Gaetana Agnesi | Cambridge | Source 320, Agnesi; Source 319, Agnesi |
| 1766 | Euler returns to St Petersburg at Catherine II's invitation, aged 59; he goes on to produce almost half his life's output there, most of it after losing his sight | Leonhard Euler, Frederick II of Prussia | Berlin to St Petersburg | Source 326, O'Connor |
| 1768-1770 | Euler's Institutiones calculi integralis published in three volumes at St Petersburg | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 323, Bogart |
| 1770 | Condorcet first uses the 'curly d' partial-derivative symbol; Legendre gives it its modern form in 1786 | Nicolas de Condorcet, Adrien-Marie Legendre | Paris | Source 325, Miller |
| 1771 | Euler undergoes cataract surgery; sight is briefly restored, then lost entirely. He dictates for the remaining twelve years and his output increases Disputed: MacTutor records Calinger's view that the standard chronology of Euler's sight loss (1738 strain, 1740 one eye) is unreliable | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 326, O'Connor |
| 1772 | Lagrange uses 'fonction derivee' in the Nouveaux Memoires of the Berlin Academy - the origin of the English word 'derivative' | Joseph-Louis Lagrange | Berlin | Source 324, Miller |
| 1773-1774 | Diderot visits St Petersburg at Catherine II's invitation; the alleged confrontation with Euler is placed here by the anecdote and is unsupported by any Russian source Disputed: Thiebault, the only source, does not name Euler and declines to vouch for the story | Denis Diderot, Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 313, Brown; Source 314, Gillings; Source 339, Thiebault |
| 5 May 1777 | Euler presents 'De formulis differentialibus angularibus', introducing the letter i for sqrt(-1); published only in 1794 | Leonhard Euler | St Petersburg | Source 325, Miller |
| 1779-1785 | Samuel Horsley uses both the Jones and the Wilson transcripts for his edition of Newton's Opera omnia | Samuel Horsley, William Jones, James Wilson | London | Source 204, Guicciardini |
| 1786 | Legendre publishes the modern partial-derivative symbol - and abandons it the following year | Adrien-Marie Legendre | Paris | Source 451, Cajori; Source 452, Miller |
| 1786 | Simon LHuilier writes "lim." for the first time, in the essay that won the Berlin Academy prize on the nature of infinity | Simon LHuilier | Berlin/Geneva | Source 451, Cajori; Source 452, Miller |
| c. 1795 | Sophie Germain submits observations on Lagrange's Ecole Polytechnique analysis course under the name of a real former student, M LeBlanc | Sophie Germain | Paris | Source 410, OConnor and Robertson |
| 1797 | Lagrange publishes Theorie des fonctions analytiques, founding the calculus on power series 'freed from every consideration of infinitely small or vanishing quantities, of limits or of fluxions', and introducing f'x, f''x and the primitive/derived pair | Joseph-Louis Lagrange | Paris | Source 317, Lagrange; Source 325, Miller |
| 1797 | Lagrange introduces f prime and f double prime, "pour plus de simplicite et duniformite" | Joseph-Louis Lagrange | Paris | Source 451, Cajori; Source 317, Lagrange |