William Oughtred: A Great Seventeenth-Century Teacher of Mathematics

A scholarly portrait traces the life, career, and teaching methods of a seventeenth-century mathematician, recounting his education, school and parish posts, and habits as a teacher. It surveys his principal and minor writings, with close attention to an influential algebra treatise, his symbolic innovations, and a contested claim to the invention of the slide rule. The study examines his impact on pupils and contemporaries, the diffusion of his notation, and debates over priority and influence, and concludes with an account of his pedagogical convictions, especially the use of visual reasoning and instruments in mathematical instruction.