René Descartes: "Father of Modern Mathematics" 1596-1650René Descartes was born in The Hague, Touraine (France) in March 1596 and died in Stockholm on February 11, 1650. René, the second from a family of two sons and a daughter, was sent to the Jesuit college of La Flêche at the age of eight. As he was in poor health, he was allowed to stay in bed until late in the morning, a custom he still followed. During his visit in 1647, Pascal told him that the only way to do good work in mathematics and preserve his health was to never allow anyone to make him get up in the morning before he wanted to. Upon leaving school in 1612, Descartes went to Paris to be introduced to the world of fashion. Through the Jesuits, he met Mydorge and renewed his childhood friendship with Mersenne. Together, they devoted two years, from 1615 to 1617, to the study of mathematics. In those days, a man of position generally entered either the army or the Church. Thus, in 1617, Descartes joined the army of Prince Maurice of Orange, then in Breda. One day, while walking through the streets of Breda, he noticed a sign in Dutch which made him very curious. He asked a foreigner to translate it into French or Latin. The stranger was Isaac Beeckman, headmaster of the Dutch College in Dort. He told Descartes that he would only do so if he answered for him. The poster was a challenge to the world to solve a certain geometric problem. Descartes developed it in a few hours and a close friendship developed between the two. This unexpected test of his mathematical knowledge made the unpleasant life of the army unpleasant for him, but due to family influence and tradition he remained a soldier. At the start of the Thirty Years' War, he was persuaded to volunteer under Count Bucquoy in the Bavarian army. However, throughout this time he continued to occupy his leisure time with mathematical studies. He dates the first ideas of his philosophy and analytical geometry from three dreams he had on the night of November 10, 1619 in Neuberg...