New Geometries, Phosphorus and Epistolary Networks: Leibniz's Strategies for Joining the Académie des sciences

In the period between 1676 and 1680 Leibniz tried to secure a paid position at the Académie des Sciences which became vacant after Roberval's death in 1675. At the same time Leibniz offered several methods, recipes and inventions to Christian Huygens that could be useful for the Académie des Sciences: among them we find his analysis situs, discussions on Becher's method to find gold, the recipe of the phosphorus, the inverse method of tangents, his arithmetical quadrature and his own intellectual network. All of these discussions were brought up by Leibniz in order to obtain the paid position at the Académie, something that has not been fully taken into consideration by the scientific literature.