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William Oughtred
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English mathematician and Anglican minister (1574–1660)
Key facts
- Born
- 5 March 1574, Eton , Buckinghamshire , England
- Died
- 30 June 1660 (1660-06-30) (aged 86), Albury, Surrey , England
- Education
- Eton College
- Alma mater
- King's College, Cambridge
- Known for
- Slide rule Multiplication "×" sign
- Fields
- Mathematician
- Institutions
- King's College, Cambridge
- Notable students
- John Wallis Christopher Wren Richard Delamain Seth Ward
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- William
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Kingdom of England
- Place of birth
- Eton
- Place of death
- Albury
- Occupation
- Christian minister
- Position held
- parson
- Educated at
- King's College
- Employer
- University of Cambridge
- Languages spoken
- Latin
- Religion
- Anglicanism
- Notable work
- slide rule
- Field of work
- mathematics
- Image
- Wenceslas Hollar - William Oughtred.jpg
Show 6 more facts
- date of birth
- 1574-03-05
- date of death
- 1660-06-13
- Commons category
- William Oughtred
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
- name in native language
- William Oughtred
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~24 min read
Encyclopedic overview
William Oughtred (/ˈɔːtərd/ AWT-ed;5 March 1574 – 30 June 1660), also Owtred, Uhtred, etc., was an English mathematician and Anglican clergyman. After John Napier discovered 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 "×" symbol for multiplication and the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions.
Clerical life
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Oughtred” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.