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Mid Unit Assignment: History of Logarithms

The use of logarithms in mathematics today has led to many problems to be solved easily in many industries
such as the world of business (specifically finance and accounting) and medicine specifically. Scenarios such as
determining how much a certain amount of money for a person would be worth in a few years if they deposited
money into their bank account with a certain amount of interest or measuring the growth of bacteria resulted in a
disease are all related to logarithms. But just as any other invention or creation made by mankind that resulted in
common use in today's world, logarithms has its own history. The location, timing, and purpose of this
mathematical unit as we call it today in high school serves an important moment to realize the beginning and
foundation of logarithms. The education required to learn and truly understand the beginning of logarithms
requires in-depth information about who invented logarithms, when it was invented, why was it invented, how and
where was it invented.
The invention of logarithms was to be founded by two men, both of different nationalities with different
purposes which eventually led to the creation of logarithms as we know it today. With the nationalities being Swiss
and Scottish, their names are referred to as "John Napier and Joost Burgi" (Marcus,1999). While John Napier is the
main person to discover methods relating to how most high schools learn logarithms, Joost Burgi also plays a small
part in contributing to his ideas on how to create methods that will make mathematics more easy to solve real
world problems. As for the date of the release of logarithms, both John Napier and Joost Burgi released their own
versions of logarithms on different dates as "Napier's logarithms were published in 1614 and Burgi's logarithms
were published in 1620"(Marcus,1999). Although their publishing was released, the base structure of logarithms
wasn't recognized until the year of 1685 by John Wallis and Johann Bernoulli in 1694. This was because of the lack
of evidence to prove that their calculations and idea had worked or were correct. The location of the discovery of
logarithms is in two different locations where John Napier and Joost Burgi are from, which is both "Switzerland
and Scotland"(Marcus,1999). Due to the lack of transportation during the 1600's, both Joost Burgi and John Napier
were unable to meet together and discuss their ambitious plans of creating a new method which is able to solve real
world problems. Overall, it took a very long time for John Napier's and Joost Burgi's hard work to be recognized
by an overwhelming majority at their time and to be commonly used leading up to learning this unit in high
school(specifically Grade 12 Advanced Functions).
 

Bibliography
Marcus, N. (1999). A REVIEW OF LOGARITHMS. Retrieved January 1, 2019, from
http://www.sosmath.com/algebra/logs/log1/log1.html
Fogleman, A. (2005, October 19). Logarithm. Retrieved January 1, 2019, from
https://www.thocp.net/reference/sciences/mathematics/logarithm_hist.htm
Frieberger, M. (2018, July 27). The making of the logarithm. Retrieved January 2, 2019, from
https://plus.maths.org/content/dynamic-logarithms
Mark, K. M., & Montelle, C. (2018). Logarithms: The Early History of a Familiar Function - Joost Bürgi Introduces
Logarithms. Retrieved January 2, 2019, from https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/logarithms-theearly-history-of-a-familiar-function-joost-b-rgi-introduces-logarithms