He started studying languages such as Latin and Greek at the age of twelve (1). He was such an intelligent man that he further taught himself these languages. Throughout his early teen years Leibniz studied Aristotle's logic and theory of categorizing knowledge. Not impressed with Aristotle's methods, He began to develop his own ideas and how to expand his thoughts further. While coming up with new ideas he graduated from the University of Leipzig with a bachelors degree in 1663. Now in his early twenties he had already mastered books on mathematics, theology, philosophy, and law. .
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With his wide knowledge he began to write about law and also plans for the French on how to achieve better diplomatic status for the country. His idea was based on alliance with Germany and ideas resembled that of Napleon I (2). The French government invited him to explain more details to them. While in Paris he met Huygens which led him to start studying geometry. In 1667, he had written ideas on combinations and also a description of a new calculating machine. "In this work Leibniz aimed to reduce all reasoning and discovery to a combination of basic elements such as numbers, letters, sounds and colours- (1). As you can see this was a very intelligent man. His goal in life was to gather all human knowledge (1). .
All of the ideas stated are obviously from a very intelligent man. In 1673, he was in London and had met many man some of could be considered to have good knowledge on certain subjects, but none were as well rounded as Leibniz. It was at this time he was fooling around with ideas of calculus. In November of 1675 he wrote a manuscript using ò f (x) dx notation for the first time (1). Within a years time he discovered the familiar.
d(xn) = nxn-1 dx for integral and fractional n. Word of his work was starting to spread throughout Europe. .
Newton realizing that Leibniz had solved calculus was nervous.
