Page:A History of Mathematics (1893).djvu/249

 was Newton's method of fluxions which had been communicated to Leibniz in the Oldenburg letters. A review of Wallis' works^ in the Leipzig Acts for 1696, reminded the reader of Newton's own admission in the scholium above cited.

For fifteen years Leibniz had enjoyed unchallenged the honour of being the inventor of his calculus. But in 1699 Fato de Duillier, a Swiss, who had settled in England, stated in a mathematical paper, presented to the Royal Society, his conviction that Newton was the first inventor; adding that, whether Leibniz, the second inventor, had borrowed anything from the other, he would leave to the judgment of those who had seen the letters and manuscripts of Newton. This was the first distinct insinuation of plagiarism. It would seem that the English mathematicians had for some time been cherishing suspicions unfavourable to Leibniz. A feeling had doubtless long prevailed that Leibniz, during his second visit to London in 1676, had or might have seen among the papers of Collins, Newton's Analysis per æquationes, etc., which contained applications of the fluxionary method, but no systematic development or explanation of it. Leibniz certainly did see at least part of this tract. During the week spent in London, he took note of whatever interested him among the letters and papers of Collins. His memoranda discovered by Gerhardt in 1849 in the Hanover library fill two sheets.[40] The one bearing on our question is headed "Excerpta ex tractatu Newtoni Msc. de Analysi per æquationes numero terminorum infinitas." The notes are very brief, excepting those De Resolutione æquationum affectarum, of which there is an almost complete copy. This part was evidently new to him. If he examined Newton's entire tract, the other parts did not particularly impress him. From it he seems to have gained nothing pertaining to the infinitesimal calculus. By the previous