Johan de Witt

Johan de Witt (1625 to 1672) was a Dutch statesman and mathematician, Grand Pensionary of Holland and a leading figure of the Dutch Golden Age. He studied mathematics and law at Leiden and took a doctorate at Angers in 1645. In 1646, at the age of 23, he wrote Elementa curvarum linearum, which appeared in 1661 in the second volume of Frans van Schooten's Latin edition of Descartes's Geometry. The work has been described as the first textbook in analytic geometry and treats conic sections from both synthetic and analytic points of view, giving full details of the locus problem for quadratic equations. He also wrote on financial mathematics, showing in The Worth of Life Annuities Compared to Redemption Bonds how to value annuities, which is called one of the first applications of probability in economics. He and his brother Cornelis were lynched at The Hague in 1672.