I have spent my whole life studying the plane rectangular coordinate system, but you use it to solve problems.
-﹣Rene. Descartes
Extension: René Descartes (March 31, 1596 - February 11, 1650), born on March 31, 1596 in the Andre-Loire province of France Touraine (now Descartes, named after Descartes), died in Stockholm, Sweden on February 11, 1650, French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. He made important contributions to the development of modern mathematics and is considered the father of analytic geometry because of his formulation of the geometric coordinate system.
He is also one of the founders of modern Western philosophical thought, a pioneer of modern idealism, and put forward the idea of ??"universal skepticism." His philosophical thoughts deeply influenced subsequent generations of Europeans and laid the foundation for European "rationalist" philosophy.
Descartes is best known for his achievements as a mathematician. He invented one of the basic tools of modern mathematics, the coordinate system, in 1637. He combined geometry and algebra to create analytic geometry. At the same time, he also derived geometric formulas such as Descartes' theorem. It is worth mentioning that the famous cardioid equation was also proposed by Descartes.
In philosophy, Descartes is a dualist and rationalist. He was the pioneer of European "rationalism". Regarding Descartes' philosophical thoughts, the most famous one is his statement "I think, therefore I am." His Meditations on First Philosophy (also known as Meditations on Metaphysics) remains one of the required readings in many university philosophy departments.
In terms of physics, Descartes applied his coordinate geometry to optical research, and made the first theoretical proof of the law of refraction in "Refraction". In the second chapter of his "Principles of Philosophy", he stated the law of inertia relatively completely for the first time in the form of the first and second laws of nature, and clearly proposed the law of conservation of momentum for the first time. These laid a certain foundation for the subsequent research by Newton and others.