Mathematician:René Descartes

Also known as Renatus Cartesius.

French mathematician and philosopher who invented the Cartesian coordinate system, and thence the field of analytic geometry.

Nationality
French

History

 * Born: 31 March 1596, La Haye (now Descartes), Touraine, France.
 * Died: 11 Feb 1650, Stockholm, Sweden

Theorems

 * Cartesian coordinate system
 * Cartesian Product


 * Independently discovered Snell's Law in 1637, hence it is known in France as Descartes' Law or the the Snell-Descartes Law.

Books and Papers

 * 1637: Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, including:
 * La Dioptrique (on optics)
 * Les Météores (on meteorology, one of the first attempts to put weather on a scientific basis)
 * (his most important work, in which he joined algebra to geometry)


 * 1641: Meditations on First Philosophy


 * 1644: Principia Philosophiae, in four parts:
 * The Principles of Human Knowledge
 * The Principles of Material Things
 * Of the Visible World
 * The Earth


 * 1644: Meditations


 * Le Monde, ou Traité de la Lumière published (in part) after his death