Robert Recorde

Mathematician, born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, SW Wales, UK. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge, then practised medicine in London. He wrote the first English textbooks on elementary arithmetic and algebra, which became the standard works in Elizabethan England, including The Ground of Artes (1543) and The Whetstone of Witte (1557). He was in charge of mines in Ireland, but died in prison after losing a lawsuit brought against him by the Duke of Pembroke.

Robert Recorde (c.

A member of a respectable family of Tenby, Wales, he entered the University of Oxford in about 1525, and was elected a fellow of All Souls College in 1531. It appears that he afterwards went to London, and acted as physician to King Edward VI and to Queen Mary, to whom some of his books are dedicated.

Recorde published several works upon mathematical subjects, chiefly in the form of dialogue between master and scholar, such as the following:

The Grounde of Artes, teachings the Worke and Practise, of Arithmeticke, both in whole numbers and fractions (c. 1540) The Pathway to Knowledge, containing the First Principles of Geometry ... bothe for the use of Instrumentes Geometricall and Astronomicall, and also for Projection of Plattes (London, 1551) The Castle of Knowledge, containing the Explication of the Sphere both Celestiall and Materiall, etc. (London, 1556) The Whetstone of Witte, which is the second part of Arithmetike, containing the Extraction of Rootes, the Cossike Practice, with the Rules of Equation, and the Woorkes of Surde Numbers (London, 1557). This was the book in which the equals sign was introduced, and the first English book on algebra. a medical work, The Urinal of Physic (1548), frequently reprinted.

Sherburne states that Recorde also published Cosmographiae isagoge, and that he wrote a book De Arte faciendi Horologium and another De Usu Globorum et de Statu temporum.