Mathematician:Edmund Gunter

Mathematician

British clergyman, mathematician, geometer and astronomer.

Best remembered for his contributions toward land surveying: Gunter's chain, the Gunter's quadrant and the Gunter's scale.

Credited with the first ever publication, in $1620$, of logarithms of trigonometric functions.

Invented the terms cosine and cotangent.

Nationality

English, of Welsh descent

History

• Born: 1581 in Hertfordshire, England
• Died: 10 December 1626 in London, England

Inventions

• Gunter's Chain
• Gunter's Quadrant
• Gunter's Scale
• Gunter's Rule

Definitions of concepts named for Edmund Gunter can be found here.

Publications

• 1603: New Projection of the Sphere
• 1620: Canon Triangulorum sive Tabulae Sinuum et Tangentium Artificialum ("Canon of Triangles: or Tables of Artificial Sines and Tangents")
• 1623: Description and Use of the Sector, the Crosse-staffe and other Instruments
• 1624: The Description and Use of His Majesties Dials in Whitehall Garden

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Edmund Gunter": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive