Robert Recorde

Robert Recorde was the first person to write an original book on arithmetic in English, rather than the then-standard Latin or Greek—and thus the first to write about math in a way that ordinary people could understand. He was, in effect, the first mathematics teacher in the English-speaking world. This biography—one of the first to provide a comprehensive overview of Recorde’s life and work—traces the major influences on his study and his writing and charts his contribution made to the development of mathematical and scientific thinking in Europe.