RECORDE, ROBERT

born c. 1510, , Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales died 1558, London, Eng. physician and the foremost mathematician of 16th-century England. Recorde was appointed a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1531. He later taught at the University of Cambridge, and, after earning his medical degree there in 1545, he served as physician to King Edward VI and Queen Mary. Recorde virtually established the English school of mathematics and first introduced algebra into England. He was the first to write mathematical and astronomical works in English; and his mathematics texts were used in England for more than a century. His first known work was a popular arithmetic, The Ground of Artes (c. 1542). In his astronomy text, The Castle of Knowledge (1551), he wrote favourably of Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. His Pathewaie to Knowledge (1551) was an abridged version of Euclid's Elements. Perhaps his most noted work was The Whetstone of Witte (1557), in which he first proposed the use of the equals sign (=). Recorde died in prison. The reason for his imprisonment is not known.