John Napier
1550-1617
Scottish Mathematician
In 1914, on the brink of World War I, the Royal Society of Edinburgh took time to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio, in which John Napier first presented his system of logarithms. Fifty years later, on the verge of the computer revolution, Napier University of Edinburgh was named in honor of Scotland's great mathematician—a man who, as a pioneer of logarithms and an inventor of an early calculator, helped make that revolution possible.
Members of the Scottish nobility, both Napier's father, Sir Archibald Napier, and his mother, Janet Bothwell, came from old and highly distinguished families. At the age of 13, Napier entered the University of St. Andrews, but did not complete his education; rather, he traveled in Europe for a time before returning to Scotland at age 21. In the following year, he married Elizabeth Stirling, with whom he had two children. Elizabeth died in 1579, and Napier married Agnes Chisholm, with whom he fathered 10 more children. His father died in 1608, at which point Napier inherited Merchiston Castle and the title eighth laird of Merchiston; hence his later nickname, "the Marvelous Merchiston."
Much of Napier's most important mathematical work, including the Descriptio and its companion the Constructio (1619), dates from the final decade of his life, the 1610s, when he was in his sixties. In these and other writings, he became one of the very first mathematicians to use the decimal point. Among the concepts he introduced were "Napier's analogies," formulae for spherical triangles; "Napier's rules of circular parts," tables for the right spherical triangle; and of course logarithms.
He arrived at the latter not through pure mathematics, but through his interests as an astronomer, which forced him to make large and detailed calculations. Eventually Napier hit upon the idea of using a logarithm, or the power to which a given number must be raised to yield a given product, as a means of simplifying such computations. The sum of two indices and the product of their powers is the same: thus 22 × 23 = 22+3; or, to put it another way, 4 × 8 = 32 = 25. By putting together logarithmic tables, as he did with the help of mathematician Henry Briggs (1561-1630), Napier provided a means of relatively easy computation that remained in use until the advent of the calculator and computer in the twentieth century.
Napier also invented several rudimentary calculators, the most famous of which was "Napier's bones," a set of rods marked with numbers which he introduced in Rabdologia (1617). So named either because they were often made of bone or ivory, or because of the bone-like shape of the rods, the bones were but the most famous of many practical (and some impractical) creations from "the Marvelous Merchiston." In his role as landowner, Napier experimented with fertilizers, invented a hydraulic screw, and developed a revolving axle for pumping water. He also designed an early submarine and tank, as well as a mirror for using the Sun to set enemy ships on fire, and claimed to have created a prototype for what would later become known as the machine gun.
Napier was not without his eccentricities: an ardent Protestant, he wrote a highly popular tract identifying the pope as the Antichrist. Detractors, no doubt awed by his wide-ranging genius, claimed that he practiced black magic, and kept a black rooster as a spiritual familiar.
The great mathematician and inventor was only 67 years old when he succumbed to gout, no doubt exacerbated by overwork, on April 4, 1617. His burial place is unknown, though it may be the church of St. Cuthbert's Parish in Edinburgh.
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