Author: E. W. Hobson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107624509
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 53
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Book Description
Originally published in 1914, this volume was created to mark the tercentenary of John Napier's Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio. Written by the prominent English mathematician Ernest William Hobson, the text provides a highly readable introduction to the theory of logarithms and puts their discovery within a historical context. Illustrations are also included. This is a concise and accessible book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in logarithms and the history of mathematics.
Author: Brian Rice
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319532820
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 1009
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Book Description
For the first time, all five of John Napier’s works have been brought together in English in a single volume, making them more accessible than ever before. His four mathematical works were originally published in Latin: two in his lifetime (1550–1617), one shortly after he died, and one over 200 years later. The authors have prepared three introductory chapters, one covering Napier himself, one his mathematical works, and one his religious work. The former has been prepared by one of Napier’s descendants and contains many new findings about Napier’s life to provide the most complete biography of this enigmatic character, whose reputation has previously been overshadowed by rumour and speculation. The latter has been written by an academic who was awarded a PhD for his thesis on Napier at the University of Edinburgh, and it provides the most lucid and coherent coverage available of this abstruse and little understood work. The chapter on Napier’s mathematical texts has been authored by an experienced and respected academic, whose recent works have specialised in the history of mathematics and whose Journey through Mathematics was selected in March of 2012 as an Outstanding Title in Mathematics by Choice magazine, a publication of the American Library Association. All three authors have revisited the primary sources extensively and deliver new insights about Napier and his works, whilst revising the many myths and assumptions that surround his life and character.
Author: Julian Havil
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400852188
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
The most comprehensive account of the mathematician's life and work John Napier (1550–1617) is celebrated today as the man who invented logarithms—an enormous intellectual achievement that would soon lead to the development of their mechanical equivalent in the slide rule: the two would serve humanity as the principal means of calculation until the mid-1970s. Yet, despite Napier's pioneering efforts, his life and work have not attracted detailed modern scrutiny. John Napier is the first contemporary biography to take an in-depth look at the multiple facets of Napier’s story: his privileged position as the eighth Laird of Merchiston and the son of influential Scottish landowners; his reputation as a magician who dabbled in alchemy; his interest in agriculture; his involvement with a notorious outlaw; his staunch anti-Catholic beliefs; his interactions with such peers as Henry Briggs, Johannes Kepler, and Tycho Brahe; and, most notably, his estimable mathematical legacy. Julian Havil explores Napier’s original development of logarithms, the motivations for his approach, and the reasons behind certain adjustments to them. Napier’s inventive mathematical ideas also include formulas for solving spherical triangles, "Napier’s Bones" (a more basic but extremely popular alternative device for calculation), and the use of decimal notation for fractions and binary arithmetic. Havil also considers Napier’s study of the Book of Revelation, which led to his prediction of the Apocalypse in his first book, A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John—the work for which Napier believed he would be most remembered. John Napier assesses one man’s life and the lasting influence of his advancements on the mathematical sciences and beyond.
Author: Klaus Truemper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780999140208
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
In the early 17th century, both Jost Bürgi and John Napier dared to invent a logarithm table whose construction required tens of thousands of computing steps. These tables reduced computing effort for multiplication and division by an order of magnitude. Indeed, their invention launched a computing revolution that continues to this day. The book tells the story of Bürgi's and Napier's work, and how Henry Briggs built on Napier's idea, creating a table of logarithms that was easier to use. John Napier and Henry Briggs described their methods in detail; distribution of their results was widespread. In contrast, Jost Bürgi did not leave detailed records of his work. Just a few copies of his table and terse handwritten instructions for its use have survived. To fill this gap, the book reconstructs Bürgi's thinking leading up to his table. The reader looks over his shoulder, so to speak, and learns how Bürgi came upon the idea, how he decided on the specific format of the table, and how his instructions should be interpreted. And so the reader experiences the magic of the invention of logarithms. The final chapters examine the question "Who invented logarithms?". For centuries, few people were aware of Bürgi's work; John Napier was considered to be the sole inventor. This changed at the middle of the 19th century when Jost Bürgi's work became more widely known. Since then there has been extensive debate whether Bürgi should be considered an independent co-inventor. Careful parsing of the history of logarithm going back to Archimedes of antiquity then reveals that, without doubt, John Napier and Jost Bürgi are independent co-inventors of logarithms.
Author:
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
Presents a biographical sketch of Scottish mathematician John Napier (1550-1617), compiled as part of the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. Highlights Naimark's work on logarithms.
Author: John Napier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
This first English translation of Napier's Rabdologia provides a clear and readable introduction to a group of physical calculating devices, which, long overshadowed by Napier's logarithms, have their own intrinsic interest and charm. "The tasks which fill'd beginners with dismayThis little book has banish'd clear away." John Napier had already discovered and published an epochmaking treatise on logarithms when in 1617 he turned to "rabdology" or rod-reckoning as yet another means by which to confront the problem of simplifying the huge calculations involved in multiplication, division, and the extraction of roots. This first English translation of Napier's Rabdologia provides a clear and readable introduction to a group of physical calculating devices, which, long overshadowed by Napier's logarithms, have their own intrinsic interest and charm. Book I describes the first device, a set of rods known as "Napier's Bones," which were inscribed with numbers forming multiplication tables and used in conjunction with pencil and paper. Book 11 presents a series of simple calculations that readers can solve by using the rods, and a series of tables of ratios useful for division. Napier then describes the second mechanical device for calculation, a forerunner of the modern calculator that he named promptuary or "place where things are stored ready for use." The third device, similar to a chessboard, allowed calculations to be performed by moving counters around the squares. Observing that the numbers had to be represented in what would now be called binary form, Napier provides instructions for changing from ordinary to binary numbers and back again, a method that worked equally well for multiplication and division and that had a particularly elegant symmetry when applied to the extraction of square roots.
Author: Mark Napier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Equations, Theory of
Languages : en
Pages : 594
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Book Description
Author: John Napier
Publisher: Alpha Edition
ISBN: 9789354000409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.
Author: Eli Maor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400832349
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest mathematical background, this biography brings out the central importance of e to mathematics and illuminates a golden era in the age of science.
Author: Ekkehard Kopp
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800640978
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.
