History
The chain rule seems to have first been used by Leibniz. He used it to calculate the derivative of as the composite of the square root function and the function . He first mentioned it in a memoir with various mistakes in it. The common notation of chain rule is due to Leibniz. L'Hôpital uses the chain rule implicitly in his Analyse des infiniment petits but also does not state it explicitly. The chain rule does not appear in any of Leonhard Euler's analysis books, even though they were written over a hundred years after Leibniz's discovery.
Read more about this topic: Chain Rule
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)