John Napier - Lynne Gladstone-Millar

When John Napier published his invention of logarithms in 1614 he was announcing one of the greatest advances in the history of mathematics, and log tables were used universally until the mid-1970s. With his 'Rabdologia', an ingenious calculating tool composed of numbered rods which came to be known as 'Napier's Bones', he enabled people in the marketplace to do multiplication sums without knowing and multiplication tables. Despite his achievements, John Napier remains curiously uncelebrated, and this absorbing story of his life aims to give him his true status.