
Portrait: Christoph Bernhard Francke · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Early Modern · Rationalist
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1646–1716
Born in Leipzig, Electorate of Saxony (now Germany)
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Invented calculus independently of Newton, sparking a bitter feud.
Ours is the best of all possible worlds.
Voltaire mocked that optimism in Candide.
Asked: why is there something rather than nothing?
Reality is made of monads: simple, mind-like substances.
Built a calculating machine and championed binary numbers.


