"Isaac Newton... went to school at Grantham and in 1661 came up as a subsizar to Trinity. ...He had not read any mathematics before coming into residence but was acquainted with Sanderson's Logic, which was then frequently read as preliminary to mathematics. At the beginning of his first October term he... picked up a book on astrology, but could not understand it on account of the geometry and trigonometry. He therefore bought a Euclid, and was surprised to find how obvious the propositions seemed. He thereupon read Oughtred's Clavis and Descartes's Geometry, the latter of which he managed to master by himself though with some difficulty. The interest he felt in the subject led him to take up mathematics rather than chemistry as a serious study. His subsequent mathematical reading as an undergraduate was founded on Kepler's Optics, the works of Vieta, Schooten's Miscellanies, Descartes's Geometry, and Wallis's Arithmetica infinitorum: he also attended Barrow's lectures. At a later time on reading Euclid more carefully he formed a very high opinion of it as an instrument of education, and he often expressed his regret that he had not applied himself to geometry before proceeding to algebraic analysis. ...He was elected to a scholarship in 1663."
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W. W. Rouse Ball, A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge (1889) pp. 51-52.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_trigonometry
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History of trigonometry
begins with the early study of triangles, traced to the , in () and . Trigonometry was also prevalent in Kushite mathematics.
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