Henry Briggs

Henry Briggs (1561 to 1630) was an English mathematician who turned John Napier's original logarithms into common base 10 logarithms, which are still called Briggsian logarithms. After studying at St John's College, Cambridge, he became the first professor of geometry at Gresham College in London in 1596, where he lectured for nearly 23 years and made the college a centre of English mathematics. Having read Napier's description of logarithms, he proposed in his lectures that the logarithm of 10 should be 1 and then wrote to Napier about it. The long division algorithm in modern use is also credited to him from about 1600. His work made printed logarithm tables the standard calculating aid of the next centuries.