Nicholas Mercator
Nikolaus Mercator (actually: Nikolaus Kauffman , * between 1619 and 1623, but probably 1620 with Cismar or in Eutin ; † January 4 or 14 or February 12, 1687 in Paris ) was a mathematician and astronomer who worked on logarithms got known.
He studied in Rostock and Leiden and was a lecturer in Rostock from 1642 to 1648, then in Copenhagen from 1648 to 1654 . From there he went to Paris (1655–1657). In 1657 he moved to England and lived in London from 1658 to 1682 . Here he built a pendulum clock that allowed more precise time measurements at sea to determine the degree of longitude . For this he was admitted to the Royal Society in 1666 . In 1682 he went to France again. He built the Versailles fountains and died there in 1687.
Mercator discovered the series for the natural logarithm (in his work Logarithmo-technica published in 1668 ):
Mercator also dealt with pure tuning and describes that by dividing the octave into 53 parts you can create a scale in almost exact natural tuning, which allows unlimited modulation. See: The division of the octave into 53 parts .
Individual evidence
- ↑ See the entries by Nikolaus Mercator in the Rostock matriculation portal
literature
- Menso Folkerts: Mercator, Nicolaus. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 115-166 ( digitized version ).
Web links
- Publications by and about Nikolaus Mercator in VD 17 .
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Nikolaus Mercator. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Mercator, Nicholas |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kauffmann, Nicholas |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German mathematician |
DATE OF BIRTH | uncertain: 1620 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | uncertain: Eutin |
DATE OF DEATH | uncertain: January 14, 1687 |
Place of death | Versailles |