René Descartes (31 March 1596 - 11 February 1650), was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer.
His most notable legacy was not for science but for Philosophy. He is often called the father of modern western philosophy and his books are still considered standard texts on those subjects.
His legacy in Mathematics set the groundwork for the calculus of Newton and Leibniz, by applying infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem.
One of Descartes most enduring mathematical legacies was his development of Cartesian geometry which uses algebra to describe geometry. He also invented the notation which uses superscripts to show the powers or exponents, for example the 2 used in x2 to indicate squaring.
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René Descartes earned a Baccalauréat and Licence in lawin 1616 at the University of Poitiers. It was his father's wish that he should become a lawyer.
Rene Descartes became famous in November 1628 during a trip to Paris where he had a confrontation with Chandoux. Chandoux believed that science was based on probabilities. Descartes attacked this view and created a whirlwind of questions.
He was invited to open a new academy of science in Stockholm by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1649.
Tour Descartes was created in 1988.
The field of psychology looks at the relationship between the physical body and the way that our mind works. Descartes helped bridge that gap between science and philosophy in his exploration of mind body dualism theory, especially in his last work, "Passions of the Soul".
Rene Descartes valued rationality and human logic. Descartes is famous for his sentence, "I think, therefore I am." It was the mind that Descartes valued more than anything else.