Gottfried Leibniz

The man who invented the ∫ and dx symbols we still use

Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician who discovered calculus at almost the same time as Newton, but independently. His notation — the integral sign ∫ and the differential dx — was so clear that the whole world still uses it unchanged. He also worked out binary, representing every number with just 0 and 1, which reaches all the way to the foundations of the computer.