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Gilles de Roberval - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (369 words) |
 | Roberval was one of those mathematicians who, just before the invention of the infinitesimal calculus, occupied their attention with problems which are only soluble, or can be most easily solved, by some method involving limits or infinitesimals, and in the solution of which accordingly the calculus is always now employed. |
 | Another of Roberval’s discoveries was a very general method of drawing tangents, by considering a curve as described by a moving point whose motion is the resultant of several simpler motions. |
 | As results of Roberval’s labours outside the department of pure mathematics may be noted a work on the system of the universe, in which he supports the Copernican heliocentric system and attributes a mutual attraction to all particles of matter and also the invention of a special kind of balance, the Roberval balance. |