# Leonhard Euler

In 1744 Leonhard Euler published a method for finding the curve that makes a quantity as small or as large as possible, founding the calculus of variations.

At a minimum the slope is zero. When you cannot solve for it directly, step downhill along the slope: gradient descent, the way every AI model learns by minimising its loss.

Canonical page: https://21ifm.com/great-minds/euler

## Explore

- [Derivatives and limits (CF001)](https://21ifm.com/basics/derivatives-limits)
- [Partial derivatives and gradients (CF002)](https://21ifm.com/basics/partial-derivatives-gradient)
- [Gradient descent and its variants (ML014)](https://21ifm.com/ml/gradient-descent)