born 1550, Merchiston Castle, near Edinburgh, Scot.
died April 4, 1617, Merchiston Castle
Scottish mathematician and champion of Protestantism .
He divided his life between attacks on the church of Rome and the pursuit of numerical calculations. On a number of occasions he urged James IV of Scotland to deal firmly with the Catholic threat. From 1594 he worked on developing secret weapons, including a metal chariot with small holes through which shot could be fired. He developed the concept of the logarithm to facilitate calculations involving multiplication, division, roots, and powers. He also introduced the decimal point as a notation for decimal fraction s. The set of calculating rods he designed was a precursor to the slide rule.