Born: 5-Mar-1574
Birthplace: Eton, Buckinghamshire, England
Died: 30-Jun-1660
Location of death: Albury, Surrey, England
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Mathematician, Inventor

Nationality: England
Executive summary: Inventor of the slide rule

English mathematician, born at Eton, and educated there and at King's College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow. Being admitted to holy orders, he left the university about 1603, and was presented to the rectory of Aldbury, near Guildford in Surrey; and about 1628 he was appointed by the earl of Arundel to instruct his son in mathematics. He corresponded with some of the most eminent scholars of his time on mathematical subjects; and his house was generally full of pupils from all quarters. It is said that he expired in a sudden transport of joy upon hearing the news of the vote at Westminster for the restoration of Charles II. He published, among other mathematical works, Clavis Mathematica, in 1631, in which he introduced new signs for certain mathematical operations; a treatise on navigation entitled Circles of Proportion, in 1632; works on trigonometry and dialling, and his Opuscula Mathematica, published posthumously in 1676. He is best known for having invented the slide rule (1622), his name being taken by the organization of slide-rule collectors, the Oughtred Society.

Father: Benjamin Oughtred
Wife: Caryl (13 children)
Son: Benjamin

    High School: Eton College
    University: BA, King's College, Cambridge University (1596)
    University: MA, King's College, Cambridge University (1600)

    Converted to Catholicism (deathbed)
    English Ancestry

Is the subject of books:
William Oughtred, a Great Seventeenth-Century Teacher of Mathematics, 1916, BY: Florian Cajori

Author of books:
Clavis Mathematicae (1631, mathematics)
Circles of Proportion and the Horizontal Instrument (1632)
Trigonometria (1657, mathematics)
Opuscula Mathematica Hactenus Inedita (1677, mathematics, essays)

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