William Oughtred's Life And Accomplishments

William Oughtred was born in Eton, Buckinghamshire, England in 1574 and died on June 30, 1660, in Albury, Surrey. He was not only an English mathematician and an inventor; he was a vicar of Shalford and then became an Anglican priest. He received schooling from Eton School where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1596 and master’s degree from King's College in 1600. He is considered one of the greatest mathematical teachers and the world's great mathematicians from the seventeenth century. He did not have formal training in mathematics and due to his curiosity and love for problem solving he was a self-taught in mathematician. His major contribution to the world of mathematics was the earliest form of the slide rule, two identical linear …show more content…
During his research he adapted John Napier's logarithms to a scale, inventing the circular slide rule in 1632 and in 1633 he invented the linear slide rule. The symbols sin, tan and sec were also a result of his research. Oughtred created a school for young men who had an interest in science. This school was tuition free so young men could share the same passion that he shared for math. By this time Oughtred had improved and designed a couple of instruments and had composed several works that were published during his life time. His works were principal papers that were published in the Clovis Mathematicae in 1631 that included a description of Hindu-Arabic notation and decimal fractions, as well as a considerable section on algebra. Some of his other works were published in Trigonometry in 1657 which was a 36-page treatment of plane and spherical