Calculus | Definition & Facts (2024)

calculus, branch of mathematics concerned with the calculation of instantaneous rates of change (differential calculus) and the summation of infinitely many small factors to determine some whole (integral calculus). Two mathematicians, Isaac Newton of England and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany, share credit for having independently developed the calculus in the 17th century. Calculus is now the basic entry point for anyone wishing to study physics, chemistry, biology, economics, finance, or actuarial science. Calculus makes it possible to solve problems as diverse as tracking the position of a space shuttle or predicting the pressure building up behind a dam as the water rises. Computers have become a valuable tool for solving calculus problems that were once considered impossibly difficult.

Calculating curves and areas under curves

The roots of calculus lie in some of the oldest geometry problems on record. The Egyptian Rhind papyrus (c. 1650 bce) gives rules for finding the area of a circle and the volume of a truncated pyramid. Ancient Greek geometers investigated finding tangents to curves, the centre of gravity of plane and solid figures, and the volumes of objects formed by revolving various curves about a fixed axis.

By 1635 the Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri had supplemented the rigorous tools of Greek geometry with heuristic methods that used the idea of infinitely small segments of lines, areas, and volumes. In 1637 the French mathematician-philosopher René Descartes published his invention of analytic geometry for giving algebraic descriptions of geometric figures. Descartes’s method, in combination with an ancient idea of curves being generated by a moving point, allowed mathematicians such as Newton to describe motion algebraically. Suddenly geometers could go beyond the single cases and ad hoc methods of previous times. They could see patterns of results, and so conjecture new results, that the older geometric language had obscured.

For example, the Greek geometer Archimedes (287–212/211 bce) discovered as an isolated result that the area of a segment of a parabola is equal to a certain triangle. But with algebraic notation, in which a parabola is written as y=x², Cavalieri and other geometers soon noted that the area between this curve and the x-axis from 0 to a is a³/3 and that a similar rule holds for the curve y=x³—namely, that the corresponding area is a⁴/4. From here it was not difficult for them to guess that the general formula for the area under a curve y=xⁿ is aⁿ⁺¹/(n+1).

Calculating velocities and slopes

The problem of finding tangents to curves was closely related to an important problem that arose from the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei’s investigations of motion, that of finding the velocity at any instant of a particle moving according to some law. Galileo established that in t seconds a freely falling body falls a distance gt²/2, where g is a constant (later interpreted by Newton as the gravitational constant). With the definition of average velocity as the distance per time, the body’s average velocity over an interval from t to t+h is given by the expression [g(t+h)²/2−gt²/2]/h. This simplifies to gt+gh/2 and is called the difference quotient of the function gt²/2. As h approaches 0, this formula approaches gt, which is interpreted as the instantaneous velocity of a falling body at time t.

This expression for motion is identical to that obtained for the slope of the tangent to the parabola f(t)= y=gt²/2 at the point t. In this geometric context, the expression gt+gh/2 (or its equivalent [f(t+h)−f(t)]/h) denotes the slope of a secant line connecting the point (t,f(t)) to the nearby point (t+h,f(t+h)) (see figure). In the limit, with smaller and smaller intervals h, the secant line approaches the tangent line and its slope at the point t.

Thus, the difference quotient can be interpreted as instantaneous velocity or as the slope of a tangent to a curve. It was the calculus that established this deep connection between geometry and physics—in the process transforming physics and giving a new impetus to the study of geometry.

Differentiation and integration

Independently, Newton and Leibniz established simple rules for finding the formula for the slope of the tangent to a curve at any point on it, given only a formula for the curve. The rate of change of a function f (denoted by f′) is known as its derivative. Finding the formula of the derivative function is called differentiation, and the rules for doing so form the basis of differential calculus. Depending on the context, derivatives may be interpreted as slopes of tangent lines, velocities of moving particles, or other quantities, and therein lies the great power of the differential calculus.

An important application of differential calculus is graphing a curve given its equation y=f(x). This involves, in particular, finding local maximum and minimum points on the graph, as well as changes in inflection (convex to concave, or vice versa). When examining a function used in a mathematical model, such geometric notions have physical interpretations that allow a scientist or engineer to quickly gain a feeling for the behaviour of a physical system.

The other great discovery of Newton and Leibniz was that finding the derivatives of functions was, in a precise sense, the inverse of the problem of finding areas under curves—a principle now known as the fundamental theorem of calculus. Specifically, Newton discovered that if there exists a function F(t) that denotes the area under the curve y=f(x) from, say, 0 to t, then this function’s derivative will equal the original curve over that interval, F′(t)=f(t). Hence, to find the area under the curve y=x² from 0 to t, it is enough to find a function F so that F′(t)=t². The differential calculus shows that the most general such function is x³/3+C, where C is an arbitrary constant. This is called the (indefinite) integral of the function y=x², and it is written as ∫x²dx. The initial symbol ∫ is an elongated S, which stands for sum, and dx indicates an infinitely small increment of the variable, or axis, over which the function is being summed. Leibniz introduced this because he thought of integration as finding the area under a curve by a summation of the areas of infinitely many infinitesimally thin rectangles between the x-axis and the curve. Newton and Leibniz discovered that integrating f(x) is equivalent to solving a differential equation—i.e., finding a function F(t) so that F′(t)=f(t). In physical terms, solving this equation can be interpreted as finding the distance F(t) traveled by an object whose velocity has a given expression f(t).

The branch of the calculus concerned with calculating integrals is the integral calculus, and among its many applications are finding work done by physical systems and calculating pressure behind a dam at a given depth.