Chapter I: Front Matter

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