The Birth of Calculus - Newton and Leibniz

Before you run away in fear of having seen the word calculus, let me preface this entry by saying that you don't have to understand how it works, or even be able to do it, to understand and appreciate why it's important and why calculus represents one of the greatest intellectual achievements of human history: the modern world would not exist without it. You may choose to turn a blind eye to it, but that doesn't make it go away, so why not embrace it?

And while you probably know that it was invented, that's right... invented, by two geniuses, Newton and Leibniz, working (mainly) independently of each other, do you know the differences in their approaches? If you've never quite had an appreciation for the beauty and elegance of math, the following short documentary, should be able to change that:

And if you don't know anything about the priority dispute between these two men, here is a short introduction to that regrettable nightmare:

Did you know both Newton and Leibniz were first-borns? From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, it makes a lot of sense why their priority dispute got so heated and cantankerous. Now Wallace and Darwin, on the other hand, were way later-borns, and look how that turned out :)