#william oughtred

[lindahall]

William Oughtred – Scientist of the Day

William Oughtred, an English mathematician and Anglican priest, died June 30, 1660, at the age of 86.

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[isomorphismes]

Revolutionary events were changing Europe in the early 1500’s: the printing press; Asian trade; American exploration; the Reformation. The Italian peninsula was not one country but a collection of city-states with many wealthy and cosmopolitan traders. Modern algebraic notation did not exist at this time. Designating variables by letters was invented by Viète in 1591. (He used consonants for constants and vowels for variables.) Writing superscript for repeated multiplication is due to James Hume—in 1636 he used Aⅱ, Aⅲ, Aⅳ, …. Even +, –, and √ were new, having been introduced in 1486 by Johannes Widman. × was introduced by William Oughtred in 1631 and ÷ by Johann Rann in 1659. Our «equals symbol» = was introduced by Robert Recorde in 1557, in his Whetstone of Witte: And to avoide the tediouse repetition of these woordes: is equal to: I will lette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or gemowe lines of one lengthe, thus: ═, because noe 2 thynges, can be moare equalle. (gemowe is an obsolete word meaning twin or, in this case, parallel.)

Joseph J Rotman (1995)

citing Robert Recorde (1557), Johann Rann (1659), William Oughtred (1631), Johannes Widman (1486), James Hume (1636), and François Viète (1591)

[j-august]

The mathematician, William Oughtred, Rector of Albury, Surrey, was regarded by the country folk as a conjurer, and, according to John Aubrey, was well content to have them think so. 'There was never a merry world since the fairies left dancing and the parson left conjuring,' thought John Selden. 'The opinion of the latter kept thieves in awe and did as much good in a country as a Justice of the Peace.'

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic

[teachersource]

William Oughtred was born on March 5, 1574. An English mathematician and Anglican clergyman. After John Napier invented logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, Oughtred was the first to use two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division. He is credited with inventing the slide rule in about 1622. He also introduced the “x” symbol for multiplication and the abbreviations “sin” and “cos” for the sine and cosine functions.

[ansiklomedia]

William Oughtred Hayatı William Oughtred; (d. 5 Mart 1574, Eton, Buckinghamshire – ö. 30 Haziran 1660, Albury, Surrey, İngiltere), logaritmik bölmeli, elle hareket ettirilebilen iki ölçekten oluşan hesap cetvelinin ilk örneğini geliştiren İngiliz matematikçi ve Episkopal rahiptir.

[teknoplof]

A lo largo de casi 50 años, el matemático y clérigo británico William Oughtred fue el párroco de la Iglesia de Albury, cerca de Guildford, en Inglaterra.