Ramble, Part 15: Deep Water

Galileo is best known, of course, as a physicist and astronomer, but he also made significant contributions to mathematics. His work on cycloids inspired several generations of successors, and he also investigated the measurement of areas in ways which heralded the coming of integral calculus. (Kepler, by the way, was also involved in this line of research.) What I want to talk about this time, though, is something he did which no one of his time picked up on - something that lay fallow until the mid-19th century.

( To Infinity and Beyond! )

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