BRIGGS, Ihssutv, a distinguished mathematician, was b. in 1556, at Warlevwood, near Halifax, Yorkshire, and studied at St. .John's college, Cambridge. In 1396, lie was appointed first reader in geometry at Gresham house (afterwards college), London, and in 1619 first Savilian professor of geometry in Oxford. This office he retained till the time of his death, which took place at Oxford, Jan. 26, 1631. 13. made an important -contribution to the theory of logarithms, of which he constructed invaluable tables. Napier the inventor had, in 1614, published a table of the so-called natural logarithms, when 13. observed that another system, in which the logarithm of 10 should be taken as would afford great facilities of 'calculation. Napier admitted the improvement on his own system, and intended to assist in carrying the plan into effect; but died in 1618, when the whole work was left to Briggs. In the same year he published his Chilias
Prima Logarithmornin, containing the first thousand natural numbers calculated to eight decimal places, and in 1624 published his AM/mid/ea Logo rithmica, the fruit of many years of unwearied application, and giving the logarithms of natural numbers from 1 to 20,000, and from 90,000 to 101,000, with 15 places. His system of logarithms is that now commonly adopted. Leaving others to carry out his calculations, for which he bad provided every facility, he next employed himself on a table of logarithms of sines and tangents, carried to the hundredth part of a degree, and to 15 places, which, with a table of natural sines, tangents, and secants, was posthumously published at Gouda, in Hol land, 1633, under the title of Trigonometria Britannica.