René Descartes: "Father of modern mathematics" 1596-1650René Descartes was born in La Haye, Touraine (France) in March 1596 and died in Stockholm on 11 February 1650. René, the second from a family of two sons and a daughter, he was sent to the Jesuit school in La Flêche at the age of eight. Since he was in poor health he was allowed to stay in bed until late in the morning, a custom he always followed. When Pascal visited him in 1647, he told him that the only way to do a good job in mathematics and preserve his health was to never let anyone make him get up in the morning before he felt like it. After leaving school in 1612, Descartes went to Paris to study mathematics. be introduced to the world of fashion. Through the Jesuits, he met Mydorge and renewed his childhood friendship with Mersenne. Together they dedicated two years, from 1615 to 1617, to the study of mathematics. During that period a man of position usually joined the army or the church and so in 1617 Descartes joined the army of Prince Maurice of Orange, then in Breda. One day, walking through the streets of Breda, he noticed a sign in Dutch that intrigued him a lot. He asked a stranger to translate it into French or Latin. The stranger was Isaac Beeckman, the principal of Dutch College in Dort. He told Descartes that he would only do so if he answered for him. The sign was a challenge to the world to solve a certain geometric problem. Descartes managed to solve it within a few hours and a close friendship had formed between the two. This unexpected proof of his mathematical achievements made the unpleasant life of the army unpleasant to him, but due to family influence and tradition he remained a soldier. At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War he was persuaded to volunteer under the Comte de Bucquoy in the Bavarian army. However, throughout this time he continued to occupy his free time with mathematical studies. He dated the first ideas of his philosophy and his analytical geometry according to three dreams he experienced on the night of November 10, 1619 in Neuberg.