Oughtred was not a professional mathematician. He did not make his livelihood as a teacher of mathematics or as a writer, nor as an engineer who applies mathematics to the control and use of nature’s forces. Oughtred was by profession a minister of the gospel. With him the study of mathematics was a side issue, a pleasure, a recreation. Like the great French algebraist, Vieta, from whom he drew much of his inspiration, he was an amateur mathematician. The word “amateur” must not be taken here in the sense of superficial or unthorough. Great Britain has had many men distinguished in science who pursued science as amateurs. Of such men Oughtred is one of the very earliest. F. C. CHAPTER I OUGHTRED’S LIFE AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY William Oughtred, or, as he sometimes wrote his name, Owtred, was born at Eton, the seat of Eton College, the year of his birth being variously given as 1573, 1574, and 1575. “His father,” says Aubrey, “taught to write at Eaton, and was a scrivener; and understood common arithmetique, and ’twas no small helpe and furtherance to his son to be instructed in it when a schoole-boy.”[1] He was a boy at Eton in the year of the Spanish Armada. At this famous school, which prepared boys for the universities, young Oughtred received thorough training in classical learning. According to information received from F. L. Clarke, Bursar and Clerk of King’s College, Cambridge, Oughtred was admitted at King’s a scholar from Eton on September 1, 1592, at the age of seventeen. He was made Fellow at King’s on September 1, 1595, while Elizabeth was still on the throne. He received in 1596 the degree of Bachelor of Arts and in 1600 that of Master of Arts. He vacated his fellowship about the beginning of August, 1603. His career at the University of Cambridge we present in his own words. He says: Next after Eaton schoole, I was bred up in Cambridge in Kings Colledge: of which society I was a member about eleven or twelve yeares: wherein how I behaved my selfe, going hand in hand with the rest of my ranke in the ordinary Academicall studies and exercises, and with what approbation, is well knowne and remembered by many: the time which over and above those usuall studies I employed upon the Mathematicall sciences, I redeemed night by night from my naturall sleep, defrauding my body, and inuring it to watching, cold, and labour, while most others tooke their rest. Neither did I therein seek only my private content, but the benefit of many: and by inciting, assisting, and instructing others, brought many into the love and study of those Arts, not only in our own, but in some other Colledges also: which some at this time (men far better than my selfe in learning, degree, and preferment) will most lovingly acknowledge.[2]