THE NAPIER TERCENTENARY AND THE 

 INVENTION OF LOGARITHMS 



By C. G. KNOTT, D.Sc. 

 General Secretary, Royal Society of Edinburgh 



On Friday, July 24, 1914, there assembled in the Debating Hall 

 of the Students' Union of the University of Edinburgh a cosmo- 

 politan gathering, which proved to be the last International 

 Congress before the Great War. Favoured with bright weather, 

 Scotland's picturesque capital looked her best ; and her citizens 

 welcomed visitors and delegates from all parts of the Old and 

 New World. 



In response to the invitation of the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, under whose auspices the Napier Tercentenary Cele- 

 bration was held, representatives of almost every nationality 

 of the civilised world enrolled their names as Members of the 

 Congress, and a large percentage of these were able to appear in 

 person. The meeting of the British Association in Australia 

 robbed the Edinburgh gathering of a goodly contingent of 

 eminent British mathematicians who were keenly interested in 

 Napier and Napier's work; and there is little doubt now that 

 delegates from the south and east of Europe were at the last 

 moment prevented from travelling by the ominous outlook in 

 Austria and Serbia. 



Fortunately the political situation did not become acute till 

 the last day of the Congress, and representatives from Russia, 

 Poland, France, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Turkey, met 

 their British friends in brotherly conference along with Danes, 

 Dutchmen, Canadians, and other Americans, their one purpose 

 being the commemoration of the publication in 1614 of the first 

 book of logarithms, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Description as 

 Napier himself somewhat audaciously called it. 



To most minds the word Logarithm connotes a system of 

 calculations in which addition and subtraction take the place 

 of multiplication and division, and in which still more difficult 

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