Abstract
HENRY BRIGGS died three hundred years ago, on Jan. 26, 1631. He is famous for his important works on logarithms. Napier's first publication of the invention of logarithms, in 1614, had come on the world, as Lord Moulton said, “as a bolt from the blue,” breaking in upon human thought abruptly without borrowing from other workers or following known lines of thought. Twenty years of persistent effort had been expended by Napier before he arrived at his great discovery, but within far less time than that after its publication the new method of computation was in use in England, Prance, Germany, and Italy, and its almost immediate adoption for astronomical and other calculations was mainly due to Briggs.
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Henry Briggs, 1561–1631. Nature 127, 133–134 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127133a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127133a0