dimanche 13 mai 2007

Polar coordinates

POLAR COORDINATES. According to Daniel L. Klaasen in Historical Topics for the Mathematical Classroom:
Isaac Newton was the first to think of using polar coordinates. In a treatise Method of Fluxions (written about 1671), which dealt with curves defined analytically, Newton showed ten types of coordinate systems that could be used; one of these ten was the system of polar coordinates. However, this work by Newton was not published until 1736; in 1691 Jakob Bernoulli derived and made public the concept of polar coordinates in the Acta eruditorum.
Source is Jeff Miller, Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics