NAPIER, John, Scottish mathematician: b. Merchiston, near Edinburgh, 1550; d. there, 4 April 1617. He was educated at Saint Andrews, traveled in Europe, returned to a life of proprietorship and leisurely study, and pub lished in 1593 his 'Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John,' which was an original work, without a predecessor in its line. For a time he busied himself, with devis ing instruments of war, such as burning glasses for firing hostile vessels; a piece of artillery for destroying everything round the arc of a circle; and a round metal chariot, from which shot might be fired through small openings while the enemy became °abased and altogether uncertain.° Sir Thomas Urquhart ( 'The Jewel,' 1652) says that the artillery was tried on a Scottish plain with the slaughter of many sheep and cattle. His great work, 'Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis appeared in 1614. This explained the nature of
logarithms (q.v.), then styled °artificial num bers," and supplied the table for their appli cation. It astonished Europe and deeply in terested Kepler, who helped to extend the use of logarithms. With Henry Briggs, Napier devised the new canon in which 0 represented the logarithm of unity and 10,000,000,000 that of the entire sine. His 'Mirifici Logarith morum Canonis Constructio' (1619) explained the method of constructing the table; and the 'Rabdologia> (1617) was a description of enumeration by bone or ivory rods, which, known as °Napier's rods," were widely em ployed in Europe for assistance in multiplica tion, division and the extraction of the square and cube root. Consult Napier, Mark, 'Mem oirs' (1834).