BRIGGS (Hstinir), in biography, a very considerable mathematician, born near Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1556 ; and in 1579, having attained a good share of gramma tical knowledge, he went to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees in regular order, and in 1588 was chosen fellow of his college. The bent of his mind was to the mathematics, in which he made so great and rapid a progress, that in 1592 he was appointed examiner and lecturer in that branch of science. In 1596 he was elected to the first professorship of geometry at Gre sham College ; he constructed a table for finding the latitude, from the variation of the magnetic needle being given. About the year 1609 he contracted an acquaint ance with Mr. Usher, afterwards Arch bishop of Armagh, and in correspondence with him he mentions his employment upon the calculation of eclipses, and soon after writes that he is wholly engaged about the noble invention of logarithms, which had just made their appearance, and in the improvement of which he af terwards had so great a concern. On this subject he delivered various lectures at Gresham College, and proposed to alter the scale from the hyperbolic form which Napier had given them, to that in which 1 should be the logarithm of the ratio of 10 to 1. In 1616 Briggs made a visit to Napier at Edinburgh, and communicated to him his wishes. The alteration was agreed upon, and in 1617 he published his first 1000 of logarithms. He suc ceeded in 1619 to the Savilian professor ship of geometry at Oxford, upon which he resigned the duties of Gresham Col lege. Here he devoted himself most se dulously to his studies, and published many works connected with the higher branches of mathematics.— His " Arith metica Logarithmica" was printed in 1624; it contained the logarithms of 30,000 natural numbers to 14 places of figures, besides the index. He completed
a table of logarithmic sines and tangents for the 100th part of every degree to 14 places; with a table of natural sines, tangents, and secants, ?ilith the construc tion of the whole. These tables were printed, under the title of Trigonornetria Britannica. " In the construction of these two works," says one of Mr. Brigg's bio graphers, "on the Logarithms of Num. bets and of Sines and Tangents, our au thor, besides extreme labour and appli cation, manifests the highest powers of genius and invention, as we here for the first time meet with several of the most important discoveries in the mathematics, and what have hitherto been considered as of much later invention ; such as the Bi nomial Theorem ; the Differential Me thod and Construction of Tables by Dif ferences; the Interpolation of Differen ces, with Angular Sections, and several other ingenious compositions." This great man died at Oxford in1630, and was buried in the Chapel of Merten College, highly respected by his contem poraries, by many of whom his character was drawn with h great ability : by Ought red he is designated as the mirror of the age for his great skill in geometry : the learned Barrow extols his ability, skill, and industry, particularly in perfecting the invention of logarithms, which,without his care, might have continued an imper fect and useless design. Dr. Smith re presents him as easy of access to all, Free from arrogance, moroseness, envy, ambi tion, and avarice, a contemner of riches, and contented in his own situation, pre ferring a studious retirement to all the splendid circumstances of life.