William Oughtred
Honor Roll
(b.) March 5, 1574 — (d.) June 30, 1660
Description
Credited as the inventor of the slide rule in 1622, Oughtred was the first to use two logarithmic scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division.
Oughtred also introduced the "×" symbol for multiplication as well as the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions.