John Napier

1550-1617

John Napier

John Napier was born in Scotland in 1550 when his father was only 16 years of age. He spent most of his life at his family estate, the Merchiston Castle near Edinburgh, Scotland.

Napier was highly involved in the political and religious controversies of the day in Scotland. He was anti-Catholic and promoted the causes of John Knox and James I. In 1593, he published A Plaine Discovery of the whole Revelation of Saint John, which bitterly attacked the Church of Rome. In this publication, Napier tried to show that the Pope was the Antichrist and that the world was going to end between the years 1688-1700. Many people believed he was insane and a dealer in black art.

During his leisure time, he studying mathematics and science, whereby he invented logarithms, Napier's bones or rods to perform multiplication, division and taking square roots of numbers. In 1614, Napier published a brochure called Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio (A Description of the Wonderful Law of Logarithms).

Napier contributed to mathematics in the following ways:

• invention of logarithms
• discovery of the binary system
• invention of Napier's bones or rods
• algebraic symbolism
• two trignometric formulas known as Napier's analogies