Wallis. Computation of π by Successive Interpolations

Abstract

After 1650, analytic methods began to receive more attention and to replace geometric methods based on the writings of the ancients. This was due partly to the acceptance into geometry of those algebraic methods that Descartes and Fermat had introduced, and partly to the still very active interest in numerical work—interpolation, approximation, logarithms —a heritage of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This tradition was strong in England, where Napier and Briggs had labored.