"The invention of logarithms, without which many of the numerical calculations which have constantly to be made would be practically impossible, was due to Napier of Merchiston. The first public announcement of the discovery was made in his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, published in 1614, and of which an English translation was issued in the following year; but he had privately communicated a summary of his results to Tycho Brahe as early as 1594. In the work Napier explains the nature of logarithms by a comparison between corresponding terms of an arithmetical and geometrical progression. He illustrates their use, and gives tables of the logarithms of the sines and tangents of all angles of the first quadrant, for differences of every minute, calculated to seven decimal places. His definition of the logarithm of a quantity n was what we should now express by 10^7 \log_{e} \!\left( \frac{10^7}{n} \right). This work... is the first valuable contribution to the progress of mathematics which was made by any British writer."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
InventorsTheologians from ScotlandPhysicists from ScotlandMathematicians from ScotlandAstronomers from Scotland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
W. W. Rouse Ball, The History of Mathematics (1912)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Napier
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Napier
97 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Napier →
Related Quotes
"Napier, Lord of Merchiston, hath set my head and hands at work with his new and admirable Logarithms. I hope to see h…"
"It is no exaggeration to say that the invention of logarithms "by shortening the labours doubled the life of the astr…"
"The rapid recognition throughout Europe of the advantages of using logarithms in practical calculations was mainly du…"
"Napier, in 1614, ...employed the idea of the fluxion of a quantity to picture by means of lines the relation between …"
"Many computing devices have been used since the invention of the abacus. These include , sector compasses, slide rule…"
"Let our judgment not be too harsh. The period under consideration is too near the Middle Ages to admit of complete em…"
"From every line of his descent talent seems to have flowed in upon John Napier."
"The method by which the logarithms were calculated was explained in the Constructio, a posthumous work issued in 1619…"
"These properties of the indices of numbers were taken notice of by Stifelius, and even by Archimedes in his work on t…"
"Early in the 1660s, a pair of mathematicians from the British Isles, John Napier and Henry Briggs, jointly introduced…"