Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was the human equivalent of having too many tabs open. Philosopher, mathematician, lawyer, diplomat, historian, librarian, inventor — he basically collected careers the way other people collect stickers.

Oh, and in his spare time he co-invented calculus, completely separately from Newton. His real superpower was notation: the symbols he chose were so clean that we still use them today, while Newton's dots quietly got dropped. When you write a derivative as a fraction, or an integral with that long stretchy "S", you're using Leibniz's handwriting:

The great calculus beef

Because both men invented calculus at roughly the same time, their fans (and the two of them) spent years arguing about who did it first and who copied whom. It got nasty, it got personal, and it dragged on even after both of them had died — which is impressively committed, for a fight you can't win when you're dead.

The verdict from modern historians: chill, everyone — they each invented it on their own. Newton got there earlier; Leibniz published earlier and wrote it better. Friendship ended… but the maths survived.

The 300-year-old flex

Leibniz also worked out binary — counting using only 0 and 1. At the time it was a curiosity. Today it's the language every computer on Earth speaks, which makes Leibniz something like the great-great-(-great…) grandfather of your phone.

He was also a relentless optimist, famous for claiming we live in "the best of all possible worlds." A French writer named Voltaire thought this was hilariously naïve and roasted him for it in a whole novel, Candide — basically a 250-year-old diss track.

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The full story (with far fewer jokes) is on Wikipedia: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — Wikipedia.