Definition:Folium of Descartes/Historical Note

Historical Note on Folium of Descartes
had communicated to the method devised by  for calculating the tangent to a curve.

seems to have thought little of this method, believing that it was not sufficiently general to be useful.

The curve now known as the folium of Descartes was used by him as a challenge to, believing that he would be unable to use this method on it.

Reportedly he was seriously annoyed at when the latter solved it without any trouble.