RECORDE, ROBERT, generally allowed to have been the greatest English mathema tician of the 16th c., hut now almost forgotten, was b. about 1500 at Tenby, in Pem brokeshire, Wales. He completed his education at Oxford, and there distinguished himself in mathematics, rhetoric, music, and anatomy; but wishing to make medicine his profes sion, he removed to Cambridge, and there, in 1515, he received the degree of m.n.," being much admired by all who knew him for his profound and varied knowledge of art and science." In 1547 he was in London, engaged in the composition of the Urinal of Physic (1548), a work which saw five editions; and was about the Caine time appointed family phy siciau to Edward VI., and afterward to queen Mary. Ten years after this we find him in the debtors' prison in London, where he died miserably in 1558. His works are all In the form of dialogues between a master and his pupil. and are written in the rude English of his time; they arc—The Gate cg Knowledge, and The Treasure of two works which seem to be completely lost; The Ground of Arts, teaching the Perfect Work and Practice of Arithmetic, etc. (Loud. 1549), an arithmetical work which has been frequently reprinted, and which exhibits a curious " melange" of the Arabic and Roman notation; The Pathway to Knowledge (Loud. 1551), an abridgment of Euclid's
.0,,nents; The Castle of Knowledge, contatning the .Explication cf the Sphere both Celestial and Material, etc. (Loud. 1551), an astronomical work, dedicated to queen Mary, in which he compares the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, end, but with great hesi tation, gives the preference to the latter; The Whetstone of Wit, which is the second part of Arithmetic, a treatise upon algebra, a subject at that time little known, in which Recorde collects the substance of the best continental writers, and adds his own improve ments and discoveries. In the appreciation of the general results derivable from alge, bride formulae, he is far beyond his contemporaries, with the sole exception of Viets, (q.v.). Recorde is regarded as the inventor of the symbol (=) for equality, and of the mode of extracting the square root of compound quantities. ilecorde's talents seem to have been as varied as profound, for, bes;des his mathematical pre-eminence, he was considered to be a skillful doctor, an able lawyer', and a philologist of mean ability.