WILLIAM OUGHTRED

WILLIAM OUGHTRED
A GREAT SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
TEACHER OF
MATHEMATICS

BY
FLORIAN CAJORI, Ph.D.
Professor of Mathematics
Colorado College

CHICAGO LONDON
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1916

Published September 1916

Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

[v]

PAGE
Introduction 1
CHAPTER
I. Oughtred’s Life 3: At School and University 3; As Rector and Amateur Mathematician 6; His Wife 7; In Danger of Sequestration 8; His Teaching 9; Appearance and Habits 12; Alleged Travel Abroad 14; His Death 15
II. Principal Works 17: Clavis mathematicae 17; Circles of Proportion and Trigonometrie 35; Solution of Numerical Equations 39; Logarithms 46; Invention of the Slide Rule; Controversy on Priority of Invention 46
III. Minor Works 50
IV. Oughtred’s Influence upon Mathematical Progress and Teaching 57: Oughtred and Harriot 57; Oughtred’s Pupils 58; Oughtred, the “Todhunter of the Seventeenth Century” 60; Was Descartes Indebted to Oughtred? 69; The Spread of Oughtred’s Notations 73
V. Oughtred’s Ideas on the Teaching of Mathematics 84: General Statement 84; Mathematics, “a Science of the Eye” 85; Rigorous Thinking and the Use of Instruments 87; Newton’s Comments on Oughtred 94
Index 97

[1]

INTRODUCTION

In the year 1660 the Royal S

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