While still an undergraduate he formed a league with John Herschel and Charles Babbage, to conduct the famous struggle of "d-ism versus dot-age," which ended in the introduction into Cambridge of the continental notation in the infinitesimal calculus to the exclusion of the fluxional notation of Sir Isaac Newton.
The former was professor of mathematics at Bologna, and published, among other works, a treatise on the infinitesimal calculus.
He at once took a leading position in the mathematical teaching of the university, and published treatises on the Di f ferential calculus (in 1848) and the Infinitesimal calculus (4 vols., 1852-1860), which for long were the recognized textbooks there.
General aspects of the subject are considered under Mensuration; Vector Analysis; Infinitesimal Calculus.
The discoveries of Johann Kepler and Bonaventura Cavalieri were the foundation upon which Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz erected that wonderful edifice, the Infinitesimal Calculus.
