John Napier

1550-1617

Childhood of John Napier• Went to College at the age of 13 at

St. Salvador’s• Grew up in a protestant home• Never finished graduating• Was basically a genius when he

was younger, nerd• Known as Mechanical Merchiston

Napier’s Love Life

• Married his first wife Elizabeth Stirling in 1571, died within 1 year of marriage, had 1 son.

• 1573 Married his Second Wife Agnes Chisholm and had 5 sons 5 daughters

• Period when most involved with religious matters

• Wrote A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John

Nerd or not a Nerd?

• Home Schooled• At age 13 sent to University of St.

Andrews• Left without a degree• Then went to Cambridge University

Nap’s Inventions

• Logarithms• “Napier’s Bones”• Decimal Point• Slide Rules• “Napier’s

analogies”

Invention of Logarithm’s

• Love for astronomy led him to find this out.

• Required him to do many tedious trig calculations.

• Developed Logarithmic methods to calculate them.

• Remained in Common use until calculators and computers.

• All put at Base 10

Napier’s Bones

• Made for simplifying calculations

• Made out of bone or ivory.

• Made multiplication a lot easier.

• Also for square roots and cube roots

Born into….

• Struggle between religions between Roman Catholics and Protestant.

• 10 years of peace, but then civil war broke out.

• Protestants won, and he found a burning passion to Overthrow the Papacy

Napier’s Religion

• A Pro-Protestant• Joined raids against

the Roman-Catholic Church

• His Book condemned the Catholic church.

• Math was surrounded by Protestant religion, hoped to create defense through math.