A standard picture of the history of mathematics during the nineteenth century refers to this as the age of rigor. It was during this period that stringent arguments were brought to the fore, particularly in a field that had long spawned controversy: the infinitesimal calculus. G.W. Leibniz and his many followers had devised numerous methods for handling infinitesimal quantities, but Augustin- Louis Cauchy found a way to circumvent these by introducing a new theory based on limits.