Cartesian coordinate system
In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, called coordinate lines, coordinate axes or just axes of the system. The point where they meet is called the origin and has (0, 0) as coordinates.
The right-hand rule
3D Cartesian coordinate handedness
René Descartes was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was paramount 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, and 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 Roman Catholic.
Portrait after Frans Hals
The house where Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine
Graduation registry for Descartes at the University of Poitiers, 1616
In Amsterdam, Descartes lived at Westermarkt 6 (Maison Descartes, left).