Aritmetische und geometrische progreß tabulen: Edition, translation, and commentary

Abstract

In the tercentenary memorial volume commemorating the invention of logarithms, or more precisely, John Napier’s invention of logarithms, Florian Cajori (1915) observed: “In the history of science it is the rule, rather than the exception, for two or more men independently to develop the same idea” (p. 93). In the same publication, Cajori also stated that “[f]ew inventors have a clearer title to priority than has Napier to the invention of logarithms” (p. 93), and he continued to highlight men who contributed preliminary ideas for and simultaneous (though independent) conceptions of the logarithmic relation. Subsequent to the tercentenary memorial volume, modern scholarship has highlighted Bürgi’s contributions to the development of logarithms. Boyer (1991), for example, noted that:.