E. W. von Tschirnhaus: His role in early calculus and his work and impact on algebra (Q910380)

Tschirnhaus is best known as an associate of Leibniz. The interest of this paper lies in the fact that it treats Tschirnhaus as an individual. It begins with notes on his life and association with Leibniz. This is followed by a discussion of the main subjects of his papers: catacaustics, quadrature, the Tschirnhaus transformation and his work on philosophical logic. The transformation which is named after him concerns the preliminary steps which he hoped would help in solving polynomial equations of degree \(\geq 5\). The work on philosophical logic contained some mathematics, including some novel types of curves.