William Oughtred: A Great Seventeenth-Century Teacher of Mathematics

by Florian Cajori

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

Copyright 1916 By
The Open Court Publishing Co.

All Rights Reserved

Published September 1916

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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