The Main Figures: From Recorde to Wallis and Barrow

The present chapter discusses works in the Euclidean tradition written by prominent figures in British mathematics. It focuses on the way they handle results related with Book II. Works analyzed include Robert Recorde’s Pathway to Knowledge, the first two English translations of the Elements, one by the highly influential Henry Billingsley (1570), and another one by Thomas Rudd (1651); two remarkable books published in 1631, Clavis Mathematicae by William Oughtred and Artis Analyticae Praxis by Thomas Harriot, both marking the beginning of an increased interest in symbolic algebraic methods in the British context; and the contributions of John Wallis and Isaac Barrow, who espoused opposing and complementary views about the relative primacy of arithmetic and geometry in mathematical discourse.