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Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz was born and raised in academe. His father was
a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and his mother was
the daughter of a law professor at the same institution. His advance was prodi-
gious: At 15, he began his study of the history of philosophy at the university; at
17, after defending his thesis, he proceeded to the University of Jena where
he studied mathematics and law; at 18, he published his treatise on law; and at 20,
he was ready to present himself as a candidate for the doctor of law degree, but he
was declared too young. So he moved to the University of Altdorf, where he not
only received his doctoral degree but was offered a professorship. He declined
this invitation and settled into a position with Johann Philipp von Schönborn,
elector of Mainz.
While in the service of the Mainz court, he lived for a time in Paris, where he
made the acquaintance of leading thinkers of his day, such as the physicist Christian
Huygens and the philosophers Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas Malebranche. As part
of his mission in Paris, Leibniz prepared a plan for invading Egypt for Louis XIV
(hoping to deflect Louis from military action in Europe). Though Louis never acted
on the plan, many scholars believe that Napoleon used the scheme 120 years later.
In addition to diplomatic initiatives, Leibniz worked extensively on mathe-
matics while he was in Paris. He invented a calculating machine that could add,
subtract, multiply, divide, and extract square roots. When he demonstrated his
machine in London, he was made a member of the Royal Society (1673). He also
discovered differential and integral calculus—though years later there was an
unpleasant dispute over whether Leibniz or Newton should get the credit for it.
Did one of these great men steal the idea from the other? The Royal Society offi-
cially belittled Leibniz’s achievement (quite unjustly according to the verdict
of subsequent scholarship). It has been said that the dispute “redounded to theGOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ
1646–1716