Natural Logarithm - History

History

The first mention of the natural logarithm was by Nicholas Mercator in his work Logarithmotechnia published in 1668, although the mathematics teacher John Speidell had already in 1619 compiled a table on the natural logarithm. It was formerly also called hyperbolic logarithm, as it corresponds to the area under a hyperbola. It is also sometimes referred to as the Napierian logarithm, although the original meaning of this term is slightly different.

Read more about this topic:  Natural Logarithm

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)

    We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.
    Milan Kundera (b. 1929)

    ... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.
    Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)