When I contacted Shmu to arrange an interview for this article, he replied that he was “actively boarding” a flight to Berlin. A week or so before, he’d bumped into some friends who told him that ...

In 1673, the Elector died and Leibniz entered into the employment of the Elector of Hanover, where he would spend most of the ...

Perhaps 50,000 perished. The great philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz—born in Leipzig in 1646—died nearly 40 years before the Lisbon earthquake, but the event would shape his legacy.