ProofWiki:Mathematicians/William Oughtred

English mathematician credited with the invention of the slide rule.

Also credited with inventing a circular version although precedence for this was disputed with his student Richard Delamain.

Experimented with notations in his famously compact writings, inventing some new symbology which stuck, notably $\times$, $\sin$ and $\cos$.

Nationality

English

History

• Born: 5 March 1574, Eton, Buckinghamshire, England
• Died: 30 June 1660, Albury, Surrey, England

Books and Papers

• 1631: Clavis Mathematicae
• 1632: Circles of Proportion and the Horizontal Instrument
• 1657: Trigonometrie

Also see

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "William Oughtred": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive