SCHOOTEN, FRANCIS, a Dutch mathematician of some note, regarding the date of whose birth or life nothing almost is known. He must have flourished during the seventeenth century, for his death is known to have taken place in 1659. He was professor of mathematics at Leyden, and taught there, at an unusually early period, the algebra of Descartes and the infinitesimal calculus. He published, in 1646, a tract on the conic sections; and in 1649 a Latin translation, coupled with a learned commentary on Descartes' Geometry. In 1651 were published his Principia Mathematica; and in 1657 his Exercitationes Mathematica, which contained some curious and interesting examples of the application of algebra to geometry.