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John Napier

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John Napier
John Napier was born in 1550 in Edinburgh Scotland. He was a famous Scottish mathematician, astronomer and physicist who is remembered as the creator of logarithms. He is also known for supporting and making use of the decimal point.
John Napier made what is undoubtedly a key advance in the use of mathematics. Logarithms are the converse of powered numbers, and made calculations by hand much easier and quicker, and thereby opened the way to many later scientific advances. His work, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, contained fifty-seven pages of explanatory matter and ninety pages of tables, which facilitated advances in astronomy, dynamics, physics, and astrology. He also improved Simon Stevin's decimal notation, and Arab lattice multiplication, used by Fibonacci, writing Napier's bones, a multiplication tool using a set of numbered rods. Napier used some of his mathematical talents for theology, as he used the Book of Revelation to predict the Apocalypse, in A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John, which he regarded as his most important work. Napier believed that the end of the world would occur in 1688 or 1700. He is also sometimes claimed to have been a necromancer; however, it was common for scientifically talented people of the period to be accused of such things without basis. In addition to his mathematical and religious interests, Napier was commonly believed to be a magician, and is thought to have dabbled in alchemy and necromancy. It was said that he would travel about with a black spider in a small box, and that his black rooster was his familiar spirit. Napier used this rooster to find out which of his servants had been stealing from his home. He would shut the suspects one at a time in a room with the bird, telling them to stroke it. The rooster would then tell Napier which of them was guilty. Actually, what would happen is that he would secretly coat the rooster with soot. Servants who were innocent would have no qualms about stroking it but the guilty one would only pretend he had, and when Napier examined their hands, the one with the clean hands was guilty. Another occasion which may have contributed to his reputation as a sorcerer involved a neighbor whose pigeons were found to be eating Napier's grain. Napier warned him that from now on he intended to keep any pigeons found on his property. The next day, it is said, Napier was witnessed surrounded by unusually passive pigeons which he was scooping up and putting in a sack. The previous night he had soaked some peas in brandy, and then sown them. Come morning, the pigeons had gobbled them up, rendering themselves incapable of flight. Also of note is that a contract still exists between John Napier and one Robert Logan of Restalrig to search Fast Castle (by means of magic) for treasure allegedly hidden there, and wherein it is stated that Napier should "...do his utmost diligence to search and seek out, and by all craft and ingine to find out the same, or make it sure that no such thing has been there." (Work Cited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Napier) John Napier died April 4th 1617 in his birthplace in Scotland. Today he is remembered as one of the most influential men in world history due to his invention of logarithms, Napier’s Bones, and other mathematical/ astrological works.

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