Gottfried Leibniz. Portrait of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz, 1646-1716). Leibniz studied a wide range of subjects, gaining a law doctorate. He worked as a lawyer and diplomat, being involved in planning a French invasion of Egypt. Meanwhile he discovered calculus (after, but independently of Newton) and combinatorial analysis. Leibniz created a calculating machine which could divide, multiply and find square roots unlike Pascal's simpler adding and subtracting machine. He had an atomist philosophy, believing atoms were the basic unit of matter. This artwork is from a book published in 1833/37.