Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm

b. Leipzig, Germany, 1 July 1646; d. Hannover, Germany, 14 November 1716)

mathematics, philosophy, metaphysics.

Leibniz was the son of Friedrich Leibniz, who was professor of moral philosophy and held various administrative posts at the University of Leipzig. His mother, Katherina Schmuck, was also from an academic family. Although the Leibniz family was of Slavonic origin, it had been established in the Leipzig area for more than two hundred years, and three generations had been in the service of the local princes.

Leibniz attended the Nicolai school, where his precocity led his teachers to attempt to confine him to materials thought suitable to his age. A sympathetic relative recognized his gifts and aptitude for selfinstruction, and on the death of Friedrich Leibniz, in 1652, recommended that the boy be given unhampered access to the library that his father had assembled. By the time he was fourteen, Leibniz had thus become acquainted with a wide range of classical, scholastic, and even patristic writers, and had, in fact, begun that omnivorous reading that was to be his habit throughout his life. (Indeed, Leibniz’ ability to read almost anything led Fontenelle to remark of him that he bestowed the honor of reading on a great mass of bad books.)

At the age of fifteen Leibniz entered the University of Leipzig, where he received most of his formal education, although that institution was at that time firmly entrenched in the Aristotelian tradition and did little to encourage science. In 1663 he was for a brief time a student at the University of Jena, where Erhard Weigel first taught him to understand Euclidean geometry. Leibniz continued his studies at Altdorf, from which he received the doctorate in 1666, with a dissertation entitled Disputatio de casibus perplexis. He was invited to remain at that university, but chose instead, during the second half of 1667, to undertake a visit to Holland.

Leibniz reached Mainz, where, through the offices of the statesman J. C. von Boyneburg, he met the elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn, who asked him into his service. Leibniz worked on general legal problems, developed his program for legal reform of the Holy Roman Empire, wrote (anonymously) a number of position papers for the elector, and began a vast correspondence that by 1671 had already brought him into contact with the secretaries of the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences, as well as with Athanasius Kircher in Italy and Otto von Guericke in Magdeburg. He also began work on his calculating machine, a device designed to multiply and divide by the mechanical repetition of adding or subtracting. In 1671 Pierre de Carcavi, royal librarian in Paris, asked Leibniz to send him this machine so that it could be shown to Colbert. The machine was, however, only in the design stage at that time (although a model of it was built in 1672 and demonstrated to the Academy three years later).

In the winter of 1671-1672, Leibniz and Boyneburg set forth a plan to forestall French attacks on the Rhineland. By its terms, Louis XIV was to conquer Egypt, create a colonial empire in North Africa, and build a canal across the isthmus of Suez—thereby gratifying his imperial ambitions at no cost to the Netherlands and the German states along the Rhine. Leibniz was asked to accompany a diplomatic mission to Paris to discuss this matter with the king. He never met Louis, but he did immerse himself in the intellectual and scientific life of Paris, forming a lifelong friendship with Christiaan Huygens. He also met Antoine Arnauld and Carcavi. The official mission came to nothing, however, and in December 1672 Leibniz’ patron and collaborator Boyneburg died.

In January 1673 Leibniz went to London with a mission to encourage peace negotiations between England and the Netherlands; while there he became acquainted with Oldenburg, Pell, Hooke, and Boyle, and was elected to the Royal Society. The mission was completed, but the elector Johann Philipp had died, and his successor showed little interest in continuing Leibniz’ salary, especially since Leibniz wanted to return to Paris. Leibniz arrived in the French capital in March 1673, hoping to make a sufficient reputation to obtain for himself a paid post in the Academy of Sciences. Disappointed in this ambition, he visited London briefly, where he saw Oldenburg and Collins, and in October 1676 left Paris for Hannover, where he was to enter the service of Johann Friedrich, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. En route, Leibniz stopped in Holland, where he had scientific discussions with Jan Hudde and Leeuwenhoek, and, at The Hague between 18 and 21 November, conducted a momentous series of conversations with Spinoza.

By the end of November Leibniz had arrived in Hannover, where he was initially a member of the duke’s personal staff. He acted as adviser and librarian, as well as consulting on various engineering projects. (One of these, a scheme to increase the yield of the Harz silver mines by employing windmill-powered pumps, was put into operation in 1679, but failed a few years later, through no fault of the engineering principles involved.) Leibniz was soon formally appointed a councillor at court, and when Johann Friedrich died suddenly in 1679 to be succeeded by his brother Ernst August (in March 1680), he was confirmed in this office. Sophia, the wife of the new duke, became Leibniz’ philosophical confidante; Ernst August commissioned him to write a genealogy of the house of Brunswick, Annales imperii occidentes Brunsvicenses, to support the imperial and dynastic claims of that family. Leibniz’ researches on this subject involved him in a series of scholarly travels; his princely support opened the doors of archives and libraries, and he was enabled to meet and discuss science with eminent men throughout Europe.

Leibniz left Hannover in October 1687 and traveled across Germany; in Munich he found an indication that the Guelphs were related to the house of Este, an important point for his genealogy. In May 1688 he arrived in Vienna; in October of that year he had an audience with Emperor Leopold I, to whom he outlined a number of plans for economic and scientific reforms. He also sought an appointment at the Austrian court, which was granted only in 1713. He then proceeded to Venice and thence to Rome. He hoped to meet Queen Christina, but she had died; he did become a member of the Accademia Fisico-matematica that she had founded. In Rome, too, Leibniz met the Jesuit missionary Claudio Filippo Grimaldi, who was shortly to leave for China as mathematician to the court of Peking; Grimaldi awakened in Leibniz what was to become a lasting interest in Chinese culture. Returning north from Rome, Leibniz stopped in Florence for a lively exchange on mathematical problems with Galileo’s pupil Viviani; in Bologna he met Malpighi.

On 30 December 1689 Leibniz reached Modena, his ultimate destination, and set to work in the ducal archives which had been opened to him. (Indeed, he threw himself into his genealogical research with such fervor that he afflicted himself with severe eyestrain.) He interrupted his work long enough to arrange a marriage between Rinaldo d’Este of Modena and Princess Charlotte Felicitas of Brunswick-Lüneburg (celebrated on 2 December 1695), but by February 1690 he was able to prove the original relatedness of the house of Este and the Guelph line, and his research was complete. He returned to Hannover, making various stops along the way; his efforts were influential in the elevation of Hannover to electoral status (1692) and earned Leibniz himself an appointment as privy councillor.

Elector Ernst August died in January 1698 and his successor, Georg Ludwig, although urging Leibniz to complete the history of his house, nevertheless declined to make any other use of his services. Leibniz found support for his project in other courts, however, particularly through the patronage of Sophia Charlotte, daughter of Ernst August and Sophia and electress of Brandenburg. At her invitation Leibniz went to Berlin in 1700, in which year, on his recommendation, the Berlin Academy was founded. Leibniz became its president for life. Sophia Charlotte died in 1705; Leibniz made his last visit to Berlin in 1711. He persisted in his efforts toward religious, political, and cultural reforms, now hoping to influence the Hapsburg court in Vienna and Peter the Great of Russia. In 1712 Peter appointed him privy councillor, and from 1712 to 1714 he served as imperial privy councillor in Vienna.

On 14 September 1714 Leibniz returned to Hannover; he arrived there three days after Georg Ludwig had left for England as King George I. Leibniz petitioned for a post in London as court historian, but the new king refused to consider it until he had finished his history of the house of Brunswick. Leibniz, plagued by gout, spent the last two years of his life trying to finish that monumental work. He died on 14 November 1716, quite neglected by the noblemen he had served. He never married.

Frederick Kreiling