Logarithms
Logaritmos
- Date
- 1614 · confidence high
- Place
- Edinburgh (Merchiston), Scotland
- Credited to
- John Napier (Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio); Henry Briggs (common logarithms, 1617); Jost Bürgi (independent)
- People
- 👤 Henry Briggs1561–1630👤 John Napier1550–1617👤 Joost Bürgi1552–1632
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A function that converts products into sums and powers into products, with tables that drastically reduced the labour of astronomical and nautical calculation. Laplace said they doubled the lives of astronomers.
Bürgi calculated tables in Prague around 1600 but published them in 1620; priority of publication belongs to Napier.
What it led to
- the slide rule
- the exponential function and the number e
- mathematical analysis
- logarithmic scales in science
Built on
- Decimal fractions and decimal point1585
- prosthaphaeresis
- Stifel's progressions
Made possible
- Slide rulec. 1622 (circular) / 1630 (lineal)
- Schickard calculating clock1623
- Jurij Vega's 140-digit calculation of π1789
- nautical tables
- Kepler's laws (computation)