Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath and philosopher who occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy, having developed differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton. Leibnizs notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity found mathematical implementation . He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascals calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first massproduced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is the foundation of virtually all digital computers.

Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1, 1646, toward the end of the Thirty Years War, in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. Friedrich noted in his family journal

Source: Wikipedia