Joost Bürgi, or Jobst Bürgi (February 28 1552, Lichtensteig, Switzerland - January 31 1632, Kassel, Hesse-Kassel) was a Swiss clockmaker and mathematician. He is sometimes regarded as the inventor of the logarithm (published in 1620), although credit often goes to John Napier, who published his work earlier. He was also a major contributor to prosthaphaeresis, a technique for computing products quickly using trigonometric identities, which predated logarithms.

The lunar crater Byrgius is named in his honor.

Jost Bürgi

1552 births | 1632 deaths | Swiss mathematicians | 16th century mathematicians | 17th century mathematicians