<P> Archimedes developed this method further , while also inventing heuristic methods which resemble modern day concepts somewhat in his The Quadrature of the Parabola , The Method , and On the Sphere and Cylinder . It should not be thought that infinitesimals were put on a rigorous footing during this time , however . Only when it was supplemented by a proper geometric proof would Greek mathematicians accept a proposition as true . It was not until the 17th century that the method was formalized by Cavalieri as the method of Indivisibles and eventually incorporated by Newton into a general framework of integral calculus . Archimedes was the first to find the tangent to a curve other than a circle , in a method akin to differential calculus . While studying the spiral , he separated a point 's motion into two components , one radial motion component and one circular motion component , and then continued to add the two component motions together , thereby finding the tangent to the curve . The pioneers of the calculus such as Isaac Barrow and Johann Bernoulli were diligent students of Archimedes ; see for instance C.S. Roero ( 1983 ) . </P>
<P> Archimedes developed this method further , while also inventing heuristic methods which resemble modern day concepts somewhat in his The Quadrature of the Parabola , The Method , and On the Sphere and Cylinder . It should not be thought that infinitesimals were put on a rigorous footing during this time , however . Only when it was supplemented by a proper geometric proof would Greek mathematicians accept a proposition as true . It was not until the 17th century that the method was formalized by Cavalieri as the method of Indivisibles and eventually incorporated by Newton into a general framework of integral calculus . Archimedes was the first to find the tangent to a curve other than a circle , in a method akin to differential calculus . While studying the spiral , he separated a point 's motion into two components , one radial motion component and one circular motion component , and then continued to add the two component motions together , thereby finding the tangent to the curve . The pioneers of the calculus such as Isaac Barrow and Johann Bernoulli were diligent students of Archimedes ; see for instance C.S. Roero ( 1983 ) . </P>
who is first credited with trying to find the tangent to a curve in antiquity
who is first credited with trying to find the tangent to a curve in antiquity
Archimedes was the first to find the tangent to a curve other than a circle , in a method akin to differential calculus . While studying the spiral , he separated a point 's motion into two components , one radial motion component and one circular motion component , and then continued to add the two component motions together , thereby finding the tangent to the curve .
Archimedes was the first to find the tangent to a curve other than a circle , in a method akin to differential calculus . While studying the spiral , he separated a point 's motion into two components , one radial motion component and one circular motion component , and then continued to add the two component motions together , thereby finding the tangent to the curve .