William Oughtred
English mathematician and Anglican minister (1574-1660) · Academics · Died at 86
William Oughtred, also Owtred, Uhtred, etc., was an English mathematician and Anglican clergyman.
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A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026
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Photos 11
The Caryll home at Great Tangley
Old St Peter and St Paul's Church, Albury, Surrey, where William Oughtred was rector from 1610 to 1660, and where he is buried.
An instrument for Oughtred's "Circles of Proportion", by Elias Allen, c. 1633-1640 (Harvard University, Putnam Gallery)
William Howard
Clavis mathematicae, 1652 edition
![Arundel House, (above), looking south; (below), looking north.[60] By Adam Bierling with Wenceslas Hollar, 1646.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Wenceslas_Hollar_-_Arundel_House%2C_from_the_S..jpg/1280px-Wenceslas_Hollar_-_Arundel_House%2C_from_the_S..jpg)
Arundel House, (above), looking south; (below), looking north.[60] By Adam Bierling with Wenceslas Hollar, 1646.About this person
After John Napier discovered logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales 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.
