- Napier also spelled:
- Neper
- Born:
- 1550, Merchiston Castle, near Edinburgh, Scotland
- Died:
- April 4, 1617, Merchiston Castle (aged 67)
- Subjects Of Study:
- Napier’s bones
- calculation
- decimal fraction
- logarithm
- Role In:
- Reformation
John Napier
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Who was John Napier?
John Napier (1550–1617) was a Scottish mathematician and theological writer who is credited with inventing logarithms to help with calculations. Napier began working on logarithms around 1594. His work is contained in two treatises: Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614) and Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio (1619).
Napier's other mathematical contributions include Napier's bones, a device that was the forerunner of the slide rule, and contributions to spherical trigonometry, particularly Napier's analogies.
Napier was also known for his strong Protestant beliefs and his involvement in the religious and political issues of his time.
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What was John Napier famous for in mathematics?
John Napier (1550-1617) was a Scottish mathematician and theological writer famous for inventing logarithms, which he intended to be a mathematical tool to assist in calculations. His work on logarithms began around 1594, and he gradually developed a computational system that allowed for the quick determination of roots, products, and quotients from tables showing powers of a fixed number used as a base.
Napier's contributions are detailed in Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614) and Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio (1619). In cooperation with Henry Briggs, Napier adjusted his logarithms into their modern form. Besides logarithms, Napier also invented Napier’s bones, a multiplication and division tool.
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What are logarithms and how did John Napier contribute to them?
John Napier was a Scottish mathematician who developed logarithms to assist in calculations. Logarithms simplify multiplication and division into addition and subtraction, which saves time and reduces errors.
Napier's work, Description of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms, explained how he created his system. In collaboration with Henry Briggs, Napier adjusted his logarithm into its modern form. Although Swiss mathematician Joost Bürgi independently invented logarithms, Napier's work came first.
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What are 'Napier’s bones' and why did John Napier invent them?
John Napier was a Scottish mathematician who lived from 1550 to 1617. Napier's bones are a set of graduated rods that he invented for multiplication and division based on logarithms. He described this method of calculation using small rods in his 1617 publication Rabdologiae, seu Numerationis per Virgulas Libri Duo.
Napier devoted his time to mathematics to create methods of facilitating computation. Logarithms simplified calculations, especially multiplication, such as those needed in astronomy. He began working on logarithms around 1594.
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How did John Napier's work make calculations easier for scientists?
John Napier's invention of logarithms in 1614 greatly simplified calculations for scientists, particularly in fields like astronomy, where complex multiplications were common. Logarithms transformed multiplication and division problems into simpler addition and subtraction, significantly reducing the time and potential for errors in tedious calculations.
Napier also introduced other mathematical tools, such as Napier's bones, a set of graduated rods that simplified multiplication and division. His work also contributed to spherical trigonometry, reducing the number of equations needed to express trigonometric relationships. These innovations collectively provided scientists with more efficient and accurate methods for performing complex calculations.
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How has John Napier’s work influenced mathematics today?
John Napier, a Scottish mathematician, introduced logarithms, which significantly simplified calculations, especially multiplication, needed in fields like astronomy. His 1614 treatise, Description of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms, detailed this computational system.
Napier's work allowed multiplication and division to be performed through addition and subtraction, using tables of powers from a base number. In collaboration with Henry Briggs, he adapted his logarithms into their modern form. Beyond logarithms, Napier also invented Napier’s bones, a tool for multiplication and division and a precursor to the slide rule, and contributed to spherical trigonometry.
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John Napier (born 1550, Merchiston Castle, near Edinburgh, Scotland—died April 4, 1617, Merchiston Castle) was a Scottish mathematician and theological writer who originated the concept of logarithms as a mathematical device to aid in calculations.
Early life
At the age of 13, Napier entered the University of St. Andrews, but his stay appears to have been short, and he left without taking a degree.
Little is known of Napier’s early life, but it is thought that he traveled abroad, as was then the custom of the sons of the Scottish landed gentry. He was certainly back home in 1571, and he stayed either at Merchiston or at Gartness for the rest of his life. He married the following year. A few years after his wife’s death in 1579, he married again.
Theology and inventions
Napier’s life was spent amid bitter religious dissensions. A passionate and uncompromising Protestant, in his dealings with the Roman Catholic Church he sought no quarter and gave none. It was well known that James VI of Scotland hoped to succeed to the English throne after Elizabeth I, and it was suspected that he had sought the help of the Catholic Philip II of Spain to achieve this end. Panic-stricken at the peril that seemed to be impending, the general assembly of the Scottish Church, a body with which Napier was closely associated, begged James to deal effectively with the Catholics, and on three occasions Napier was a member of a committee appointed to make representations to the king concerning the welfare of the church and to urge him to see that “justice be done against the enemies of God’s Church.”
In January 1594 Napier addressed to the king a letter that forms the dedication of his Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John, a work that, while it professed to be of a strictly scholarly character, was calculated to influence contemporary events. In it he declared:
Let it be your Majesty’s continuall study to reforme the universall enormities of your country, and first to begin at your Majesty’s owne house, familie and court, and purge the same of all suspicion of Papists and Atheists and Newtrals, whereof this Revelation forthtelleth that the number shall greatly increase in these latter daies.
The work occupies a prominent place in Scottish ecclesiastical history.
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Following the publication of this work, Napier seems to have occupied himself with the invention of secret instruments of war, for in a manuscript collection now at Lambeth Palace, London, there is a document bearing his signature, enumerating various inventions “designed by the Grace of God, and the worke of expert craftsmen” for the defense of his country. These inventions included two kinds of burning mirrors, a piece of artillery, and a metal chariot from which shot could be discharged through small holes.
Contribution to mathematics
Napier devoted most of his leisure to the study of mathematics, particularly to devising methods of facilitating computation, and it is with the greatest of these, logarithms, that his name is associated. He began working on logarithms probably as early as 1594, gradually elaborating his computational system whereby roots, products, and quotients could be quickly determined from tables showing powers of a fixed number used as a base.
His contributions to this powerful mathematical invention are contained in two treatises: Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (Description of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms), which was published in 1614, and Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio (Construction of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms), which was published two years after his death. In the former, he outlined the steps that had led to his invention.
Logarithms simplified calculations, especially multiplication, such as those needed in astronomy—that is, log mn = log m + log n. A multiplication problem becomes an addition problem. In cooperation with the English mathematician Henry Briggs, Napier adjusted his logarithm into its modern form. For the Naperian logarithm the comparison would be between points moving on a graduated straight line, the L point (for the logarithm) moving uniformly from minus infinity to plus infinity, the X point (for the sine) moving from zero to infinity at a speed proportional to its distance from zero. Furthermore, L is zero when X is one and their speed is equal at this point. The essence of Napier’s discovery is that this constitutes a generalization of the relation between the arithmetic and geometric series; i.e., multiplication and raising to a power of the values of the X point correspond to addition and multiplication of the values of the L point, respectively. In practice it is convenient to limit the L and X motion by the requirement that L = 1 at X = 10 in addition to the condition that X = 1 at L = 0. This change produced the Briggsian, or common, logarithm.
In the Descriptio, besides giving an account of the nature of logarithms, Napier confined himself to an account of the use to which they might be put. He promised to explain the method of their construction in a later work. This was the Constructio, which claims attention because of the systematic use in its pages of the decimal point to separate the fractional from the integral part of a number. Decimal fractions had already been introduced by the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin in 1586, but his notation was unwieldy. The use of a point as the separator occurs frequently in the Constructio. Joost Bürgi, the Swiss mathematician, between 1603 and 1611 independently invented a system of logarithms, which he published in 1620. But Napier worked on logarithms earlier than Bürgi and has the priority due to his prior date of publication in 1614.
Although Napier’s invention of logarithms overshadows all his other mathematical work, he made other mathematical contributions. In 1617 he published his Rabdologiae, seu Numerationis per Virgulas Libri Duo (Study of Divining Rods; or, Two Books of Numbering by Means of Rods); in this he described ingenious methods of multiplying and dividing of small rods known as Napier’s bones, a device that was the forerunner of the slide rule. He made important contributions to spherical trigonometry, particularly by reducing the number of equations used to express trigonometrical relationships from 10 to 2 general statements. He is also credited with certain other spherical trigonometrical relations—Napier’s analogies—but it seems likely that Briggs had a share in these.