I’m an alien
I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in Nürnberg
Being an English historian of mathematics resident in Germany I have been often asked, over the years, by people who know a little about the history of mathematics, “Who invented the calculus, Newton or Leibniz?” This is probably the most famous argument about priority of discovery and possible plagiarism in the history of science and still able to provoke nationalist sensibilities 300 years after the fact. Now as I mentioned in my first post this was the first theme in the history of mathematics that caught my attention and over the years I have devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to investigating the subject. There are two possible answers to the question….
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