Predecessors

The Babylonians sometime in 20001600 BC may have invented the quarter square multiplication algorithm to multiply two numbers using only addition, subtraction and a table of squares.[13][14] However it could not be used for division without an additional table of reciprocals. Large tables of quarter squares were used to simplify the accurate multiplication of large numbers from 1817 onwards until this was superseded by the use of computers. Michael Stifel published Arithmetica integra in Nuremberg in 1544, which contains a table[15] of integers and powers of 2 that has been considered an early version of a logarithmic table.[16][17] In the 16th and early 17th centuries an algorithm called prosthaphaeresis was used to approximate multiplication and division. This used the trigonometric identity

or similar to convert the multiplications to additions and table lookups. However logarithms are more straightforward and require less work. It can be shown using complex numbers that this is basically the same technique.

From Napier to Euler

John Napier (15501617), the inventor of logarithms The method of logarithms was publicly propounded by John Napier in 1614, in a book titled Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (Description of the Wonderful Rule of Logarithms).[18] Joost Brgi independently invented logarithms but published six years after Napier.[19] Johannes Kepler, who used logarithm tables extensively to compile his Ephemeris and therefore dedicated it to Napier,[20] remarked: ...the accent in calculation led Justus Byrgius [Joost Brgi] on the way to these very logarithms many years before Napier's system appeared; but ...instead of rearing up his child for the public benefit he deserted it in the birth. Johannes Kepler[21], Rudolphine Tables (1627) By repeated subtractions Napier calculated (1 107)L for L ranging from 1 to 100. The result for L=100 is approximately 0.99999 = 1 105. Napier then calculated the products of these numbers

with 107(1 105)L for L from 1 to 50, and did similarly with 0.9998 (1 105)20 and 0.9 0.99520. These computations, which occupied 20 years, allowed him to give, for any number N from 5 to 10 million, the number L that solves the equation

Napier first called L an "artificial number", but later introduced the word "logarithm" to mean a number that indicates a ratio: (logos) meaning proportion, and (arithmos) meaning number. In modern notation, the relation to natural logarithms is: [22]

where the very close approximation corresponds to the observation that

The invention was quickly and widely met with acclaim. The works of Bonaventura Cavalieri (Italy), Edmund Wingate (France), Xue Fengzuo (China), and Johannes Kepler's Chilias logarithmorum (Germany) helped spread the concept further.[23]

The hyperbola y = 1/x (red curve) and the area from x = 1 to 6 (shaded in orange). In 1647 Grgoire de Saint-Vincent related logarithms to the quadrature of the hyperbola, by pointing out that the area f(t) under the hyperbola from x = 1 to x = t satisfies

The natural logarithm was first described by Nicholas Mercator in his work Logarithmotechnia published in 1668,[24] although the mathematics teacher John Speidell had already in 1619 compiled a table on the natural logarithm.[25] Around 1730, Leonhard Euler defined the exponential function and the natural logarithm by

Euler also showed that the two functions are inverse to one another.[26][27][28]