In Germany there was quite a lot of ill feeling between experimental and theoretical physicists. Heisenberg won the 1932 Nobel Prise for inventing differential equations. Otherwise, any advancement in that area was considered “Jew Physics”. I think Albert Speer shut their bomb program down in 1943?
Differential equations predate Heisenberg by almost 300 years. Newton in his Chapter 2 of his 1671 work Methodus fluxionum et Serierum Infinitarum, Isaac Newton listed three kinds of differential equations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation#History
Heisenberg “invented” matrix mechanics applying the mathematic theory of matrices to quantum mechanics.