John Napier was born on February 1, 1550 in Edinburgh, Scotland. During his adolescent years, he studied in Europe and in 1571, he returned to Scotland, fluent in mathematics and ancient Greek. The following year, he married 16-year-old Elizabeth Stirling, daughter of Scottish mathematician James Stirling (1692-1770), and bought a castle at Gartnes. The couple had two children before Elizabeth died in 1579. Napier later married Agnes Chisholm, with whom he had ten children.
As a mathematician and astronomer, Napier had to perform long laborious computations involving positions of planets and stars. In his attempts to reduce the tedium of computation he discovered that he could reduce multiplication to addition if all numbers were expressed as powers of 10. To this purpose he created extensive tables expressing integers as powers of 10. From this emerged the concept of logarithms, a mathematical concept that brought the measurements of nature within the grasp of human numeracy skills.
“If language was given to men to conceal their thoughts, then gesture’s purpose was to disclose them.”