If your browser can handle JAVA code, click HERE to experiment interactively with this curve and its associated curves. Lissajous curves or Lissajous figures are sometimes called Bowditch curves after Nathaniel Bowditch who considered them in 1815.
Lissajous curves have applications in physics, astronomy and other sciences.
He learnt Latin to study Newton 's Principia and later other languages to study mathematics in these languages.