Function - History Of Functions

The idea of a function was developed in the seventeenth century. During this time, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), in his book Geometry (1637), used the concept to describe many mathematical relationships. The term "function" was introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) almost fifty years after the publication of Geometry. The idea of a function was further formalized by Leonhard Euler (pronounced "oiler" 1707-1783) who introduced the notation for a function, y = f(x).