John Napier, Laird of Merchiston was a Scottish mathematician. He was born in 1550 at his family estate, Merchiston Tower, Scotland. At the age of 13 Napier attended St. Salvator’s College but never graduated. In 1573 he married Elizabeth Sterling who bore him a son and a daughter before her death in 1579. A few years later he was remarried to Agnes Chisholm, whom he had five sons and five daughters with. In 1617 Na