John Napier :: essays research papers

John Napier-John Napier was born in Merchiston Tower in Scot impart, 1550. He was known as the Marvelous Merchiston, a title received for his genius and imaginative vision in a number of fields. Napier studied briefly at St. Andrews Universitybeginning at the age of 13. On his marriage in 1572, he was provided with an estate by his father, Sir Archibald Napier of Mechiston. He passed the remainder of his life as a land proprietor, devoting his free time to mathematics, invention, and theology. Napier died at Merchiston castle on April 14, 1617.Beginning in about 1594, Napier worked for 20 years in developing ideas on logarithms and tables of logarithms. During this period he elaborated his systems whereby products, quotients, and roots could quickly be determined from his tables, which showed powers of 10 with a fixed number used as a base.Napiers system relied on the fact that all numbers can be expressed in exponential form. For instance, in a base 2 system, 4 can be written as 2 and 8 can be written as 2 , while 5, 6, and 7 can be written employ some fractional exponent between 2 and 3. Once numbers were written in this exponential form, multiplication could be done basically by adding the exponents, and division could be done by subtracting the exponents. This considerably simplified computations such as trigonometric calculations used in astronomy.Napier finally published his tables of logarithms in 1614 in his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (A description of the marvelous rule of logarithms) which also told the steps which had led to their invention.In 1615 the English mathematician Henry Briggs talked with Napier, and together they developed the rules of Common logarithms, using 10 as a base. Briggs published his tables of Common logarithms in 1617.Napiers second published work on logarithms, the Mirifici Logarithmorum