Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s1.22

c6.s1.22

Lucas De Burgo extracted the cube root by the same coefficients, about the year 1470...Briggs was the first who taught the rule for generating the coefficients of the terms, successively one from another, of any powers of a binomial, independent of those of any other power...This theorem then being thus plainly taught by Briggs about the year 1600, it is surprising how a man of such general reading as Dr Wallis was, could be ignorant of it...and fully ascribe the invention to Newton...But I do not wonder that Briggs remark was unknown to Newton, who owed almost everything to genius and deep meditation, but very little to reading: and I have no doubt that he made the discovery himself, without any light from Briggs.19