Johann Rahn was the first to use the symbol ÷ for division in his algebra book published in 1659. Rahn's book was written in German. Pell helped Rahn with this book which contains an example of Pell's equation.
The book is important for the innovation in algebraic symbolism that it contains but recent work has suggested that credit for this may be due more to Pell than to Rahn.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
December 1996