William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker

William Brouncker
The 2nd Viscount Brouncker (1620-1684)
Born	1620 Castlelyons, Ireland
Died	April 6, 1684 (aged 64) Westminster, London, England
Residence	England
Fields	Mathematician
Institutions	Saint Catherine's Hospital
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Doctoral advisor	John Wallis
Known for	Brouncker's formula

William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker, FRS (1620 – 5 April 1684) was an English mathematician.

Brouncker obtained a Ph.D at the University of Oxford in 1647. He was one of the founders and the first President of the Royal Society. In 1662, he became Chancellor to Queen Catherine, then chief of the Saint Catherine's Hospital. His mathematical work concerned in particular the calculations of the lengths of the parabola and cycloid, and the quadrature of the hyperbola, which requires approximation of the natural logarithm function by infinite series. He was the first in England to take interest in generalised continued fractions and, following the work of John Wallis, he provided development in the generalised continued fraction of pi.

[edit] Brouncker's formula

This formula provides a development in generalized continued fraction of π:

$\frac4{\pi}= 1+1^2 / (2+3^2 / (2+5^2 / (2+7^2 / (2+9^2 / (2+11^2 / (2+13^2 / (2+15^2 / (2+17^2 / (2+\cdots$ .

Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by William Brouncker	Viscount Brouncker 1645–1684	Succeeded by Henry Brouncker

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Robert Moray (1660) · William Brouncker (1662) · Joseph Williamson (1677) · Christopher Wren (1680) · John Hoskyns (1682) · Cyril Wyche (1683) · Samuel Pepys (1684) · John Vaughan (1686) · Thomas Herbert (1689) · Robert Southwell (1690) · Charles Montagu (1695) · John Somers (1698)

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