Newton and Leibniz Duke It Out on Twitter

April 29, 2010

A group of students at Muskegon Community College are taking to twitter to rediscover the history of calculus.

In the seventeenth century, mathematicians Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz argued over who invented calculus. Newton wrote a manuscript in 1665 describing calculus, while Leibniz discovered calculus independently and published first.  

Jason Socrates Bardi chronicled the feud in The Calculus Wars. Muskegon math instructor, Maia H. Andersen developed the idea to bring the fight to twitter with students in her honors section of Calculus II.

According to a post in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog,  Andersen and her students thought re-enacting the battle on Twitter might be an interesting way to show the year-by-year progression of the row.

"It really is more about people than the math," Andersen said to The Chronicle. "So it's a story about when complications get involved and social networks get involved."

In addition to about Newton and Leibniz, about 20 twitter accounts have been created to include other people involved.

Follow the conversation on Twitter here. Andersen is archiving the entire conversation on her blog.

The MAA is also on twitter. Follow us @maanow.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus (April 26, 2010)

Images of Newton and Leibniz via Wikipedia.