And John Napier created logarithms
The Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio which Napier published in 1614 tabulates this ‘marvellous measure of ratio-numbers’ to 7 places, giving the ‘Napierian’ logarithms (we would now say) of the sines of angles from 0 to 90, and in a wealth of worked examples displays how these may be applied to reduce to the equivalent additions and subtractions the lengthy multiplications and divisions necessary in problems of plane and spherical trigonometry. The book had a short-lived heyday: one abruptly ended just ten years later when Henry Briggs brought out his 14-place table of common logar...
Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte?
Napoleon Bonaparte rose from a family of minor nobles on the French island of Corsica to become ruler of much of continental Europe. After his 1815 defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (in what is now Belgium), he was forced into exile on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. While Bonaparte may be known for being somewhat short — a commonly held but false myth spread by British propaganda at the time — his reach throughout history is long. For generations, historians have carried out countless historical studies on his life and empire. ...
The young Van Dyck’s fingerprint: a technical approach to assess the authenticity of a disputed painting
Over the past decades, technical study of artworks has become increasingly important to address attribution problems. Both the scarcity of documentary evidence about Old Masters’ art production as well as their ubiquitous practice of copying and stylistic imitation have prompted art historians to search for clues in the paint itself [1, 2]. Although imaging and analytical tools have opened up new research avenues to re-evaluate accepted attributions and assess questionable attributions, conducting technical research to address attribution problems remains challenging [3,4,5]. In order to av...
Teimour Radjabov wins Airthings Masters
Outsmarts Aronian; first player to book spot in season-finaleTeimour Radjabov maintained his calm and outsmarted Levon Aronian to win the $200,000 Airthings Masters online rapid chess final with a game to spare on Sunday....
Oliver Cromwell by David Horspool review – Britain’s chance to be a republic
The controversial inclusion of Oliver Cromwell in the Penguin Monarchs series will doubtless elicit a few tuts of disapproval from royalists. What is Cromwell doing – as David Horspool concedes, “even in square brackets” – in a list of kings and queens that runs from Athelstan to Elizabeth II? Monarchy is, however, a slippery concept and not to be crudely equated with kingly titles or the blue blood that Cromwell conspicuously lacked. Strictly speaking, Horspool reminds pedants, monarchy means a sole ruler, not necessarily the holder of a royal title. Today, the Trump presidency more closel...
