This book provides an accessible account of the rise of algebra in England from the medieval period to the later years of the 17th century. The book includes new research and is the most detailed study to date of early modern English algebra. In its structure and content this book builds on a much earlier history of algebra, A treatise of algebra, published in 1685 by John Wallis (Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford). This book both analyses Wallis' text and moves beyond it. Thus, it explores the reception and dissemination of important ideas from continental Europe up to the end of the 1 ... More

This book provides an accessible account of the rise of algebra in England from the medieval period to the later years of the 17th century. The book includes new research and is the most detailed study to date of early modern English algebra. In its structure and content this book builds on a much earlier history of algebra, A treatise of algebra, published in 1685 by John Wallis (Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford). This book both analyses Wallis' text and moves beyond it. Thus, it explores the reception and dissemination of important ideas from continental Europe up to the end of the 16th century, and the subsequent revolution in English mathematics in the 17th century. In particular, the book includes chapters on the work of Thomas Harriot, William Oughtred, John Pell, and William Brouncker, as well as of Wallis himself.