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After taking his doctorate in Law, Leibniz worked for the Elector of Mainz in Frankfurt until 1672. He then went to Paris for five years where he met and worked with Malebranche, Arnauld and Huygens. It was on his way home that he visited Spinoza at the Hague. He then traveled to Hanover to work as a librarian and historian at the House of Brunswick. In Berlin he directed the founding of the Academy and served as its first college president. During his life he continued trying to apply philosophy and mathematics to everyday affairs. For instance, he once tried to demonstrate, using logic and mathematics, why a German candidate should succeed the Polish monarchy and he used his calculus to try and make peace between Catholic and Protestant theologies.
The last years of Leibniz's life were tormented by the controversy over whether he or Isaac Newton had first invented the calculus. By then he had already fallen out of favor with the princes Brunswick who viewed his philosophy and academic propaganda as impractical and no longer useful. He died in virtual obscurity. Unlike most great philosophers, however, he left no single great work, not even, like Spinoza, one that was published posthumously. Some of his original and powerful writing can be found in his two main books,New Essays on the Human Understanding (1705) and Theodicy (1710), but his most important contributions lie in his many shorter works most of which were not published until this century and many of which, for reasons not quite understood, still exist only in manuscript form.
