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Rene Descartes We may consider Descartes as the first of the modern school of mathematics. René Descartes was born near Tours on March 31, 1596, and died at Stockholm on February 11, 1650. His father, who was of good family, was accustomed to spend half the year at Rennes when the local parliament, in which he held a commission as councilor, was in session, and the rest of the time on his family estate of Les Cartes at La …

…the center of these ellipses, and not at a focus, and that the weight of a body at every place on the surface of the earth, except the equator, would act in a direction which was not vertical. The theory of vortices marks a fresh era in astronomy, for it was an attempt to explain the phenomena of the whole universe by the same mechanical laws which experiment shows to be true on the earth.