Stephen Gaukroger, (born 9 July 1950) is a British/Australian historian of philosophy and science. He is Emeritus Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Sydney.
René Descartes (/deɪˈkɑːrt/ or UK: /ˈdeɪkɑːrt/; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] (listen); Latinized: Renatus Cartesius 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650 ) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes was Catholic.