John Napier, Scotland

1550 - 1617 Mathematician and Astronomer. Born at Merchiston Castle (Edinburgh). He was educated at St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews. He devised "Napier's Rods" or "Napier's Bones" which permitted easy multiplication by addition. This led to him defining the concept of logarithms, which he described in Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614). He also invented the decimal point.
In addition to his mathematical and religious interests, Napier was commonly believed to be a magician, and is thought to have dabbled in alchemy and necromancy. It was said that he would travel about with a black spider in a small box, and that his black rooster was his familiar spirit.Napier was able to use his black rooster to tell which of his servants had been stealing from his home. He would shut the suspects in a room with the rooster one at a time and told them to stroke it and it would then tell Napier who had done it. In actual fact what would happen is that he would cover the rooster in charcoal and the servants who were innocent would have no problem stroking it but the guilty would pretend he had and when Napier examined their hands, the one with the clean hands was guilty.Another occasion which may have contributed to his reputation as a sorcerer was one involving a neighbor, whose pigeons were found to be eating Napier's grain. Napier warned his neighbor that he intended to keep any of the pigeons that he found on his property. The next day, it is said, Napier was witnessed scooping up the passive pigeons and putting them in a sack. In fact, he had sown peas soaked in brandy, which the pigeons then ate, making themselves too inebriated to fly. Also of note is that a contract still exists between John Napier and one Robert Logan of Restalrig to search Fast Castle (by means of magic) for treasure allegedly hidden there, and wherein it is stated that Napier should "...do his utmost diligence to search and seek out, and by all craft and ingine to find out the same, or make it sure that no such thing has been there."
His son to his first wife, Elizabeth, became the first Lord Napier. In 1572, he married Agnes Chisholm and they settled on his family estate at Gartness, near Killearn (Stirling). Napier was buried at St. Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh.