Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist, engineer, inventor, historian and diplomat, born in 1646 and credited with inventing calculus alongside Isaac Newton. In physics he devised a new theory of motion based on kinetic energy and potential energy, set out in his Specimen Dynamicum of 1695. His vis viva, or living force, is mv squared, twice the modern kinetic energy, and he realised that the total energy would be conserved in certain mechanical systems. That idea was seen as rivaling the conservation of momentum championed by Newton in England and by Descartes and Voltaire in France. While serving the House of Brunswick he promoted a project to use windmills to improve the mining operations in the Harz mountains, which did little to improve mining and was shut down in 1685. He died in 1716.