Guillaume Francois Antoine de L'Hopital

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that L'Hopital, who lived during the conception of modern calculus, was taught by Bernoulli; the result of this tuition was L'Hopital's "Analyse des Infiniments Petits", which became the French reference book in the calculus for a century. The author points out that L'Hopital's name is guaranteed to survive in the memories of thousands of mathematicians because of the L'Hopital rule, which is useful when dealing with indeterminate forms. The paper relates that L'Hopital created the template by which all calculus texts would be modeled and measured against for the next three hundred years. Formulas included.

From the Paper:

"A natural progression from his two first works on the topic of calculus would have been a serious examination of the integral calculus. Indeed, this was a project that L'Hopital was capable of and actually began to write before his death. However, one of his contemporaries-Leibniz-made it known to L'Hopital that he also endeavored to publish a work covering the same hole in written calculus of the time. Apparently, out of respect to the mathematician who made much of his fame possible, L'Hopital abandoned the project."

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