Nicholas (Nikolaus) Mercator (c.1620 Eutin-1687 Versailles), also known by his Germanic name Kauffmann, was a 17th-century mathematician. Map of Germany showing Eutin Eutin is the district capital of Ostholstein located in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. ... Versailles, formerly the unofficial capital city of the kingdom of France, is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important administrative and judicial center. ...

Lived in the Netherlands (1642-1648); lectured at the University of Copenhagen (1648-1654); lived in Paris (1655-1657); Mathematics tutor to Joscelyne Percy, son of the 10th Earl of Northumberland, at Petworth, Sussex (1657); taught mathematics in London (1658-1682); became member of the Royal Society in 1666; designed a marine chronometer for Charles II; designed and constructed the fountains at the Palace of Versailles (1682-1687) Events January 4 - Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape. ... // Events Peace treaty signed at Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War. ... Copenhagen (Danish: København) is the capital and largest city of Denmark. ... // Events Peace treaty signed at Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War. ... Events April 5 - Signing of the Treaty of Westminster, ending the First Anglo-Dutch War. ... The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Events New Sweden (Delaware) attacked and captured by Dutch forces. ... Events January 8 - Miles Sindercombe, would-be-assassin of Oliver Cromwell, and his group are captured in London February - Admiral Robert Blake defeats the Spanish West Indian Fleet in a battle over the seizure of Jamaica. ... Events January 8 - Miles Sindercombe, would-be-assassin of Oliver Cromwell, and his group are captured in London February - Admiral Robert Blake defeats the Spanish West Indian Fleet in a battle over the seizure of Jamaica. ... The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is claimed to be the oldest learned society still in existence. ... Events September 2 - Great Fire of London: A large fire breaks out in London in the house of Charles IIs baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. ... Charles II (29 May 1630–6 February 1685) was the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 30 January 1649 (de jure) or 29 May 1660 (de facto) until his death. ... Versailles: Louis Le Vau opened up the interior court to create the expansive entrance cour dhonneur, later copied all over Europe Versailles: Garden front The Château de Versailles — often called the Palace of Versailles, or simply Versailles — is a royal château, outside the gates of which the... Events March 11 – Chelsea hospital for soldiers is founded in England May 6 - Louis XIV of France moves his court to Versailles. ... Events March 19 - The men under explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle murder him while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River. ...

Mathematically, he is most well-known for his treatise Logarithmo-technica on logarithms, published in 1668. In this treatise he described the following series, also independently discovered by Gregory Saint-Vincent: // Events January - The Triple Alliance of 1668 is formed. ...

It was also in this treatise that the first known use of the term natural log for the natural log appears, in the Latin form log naturalis; his use of this term is somewhat surprising, since it predates the development of calculus, in which the most natural properties of this logarithm appear. The natural logarithm is the logarithm to the base e, where e is approximately equal to 2. ... For other uses of the term calculus see calculus (disambiguation) Calculus is a central branch of mathematics, developed from algebra and geometry, and built on two major complementary ideas. ...

External references and links

• Some Contemporaries of Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, and Huygens: N. Mercator
• Nicolaus Mercator, biography.