Key Point

  • Dr. Alexander John Thompson was a statistician.Dr. A. J. Thompson started his table of logarithms project in 1922.Dr. A. J. Thompson entered the civil service where he served in several governments.

Who was Dr. Alexander John Thompson?

Dr. Alexander John Thompson was a statistician born in 1885 in Plaistow, Essex, England. He is the author of the Logarithmetica Britannica, the last great table of logarithms. This table which was published between 1934 and 1952 gives the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100,000 to 20 places and supersedes all previous tables of logarithms of similar scope, such as the tables of Henry Briggs (1624), Adriaan Vlacq (1628) and Gaspard de Prony (the 1790s).

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Career

In 1905 Dr. A. J. Thompson entered the civil service where he served in several governments before joining the statistical staff of the General Register Office in Somerset House, London in 1920.  He was engaged in the design and publication of official reports on births, deaths, and marriages and worked on the census of England and Wales.

Dr. A. J. Thompson completed his Bachelor’s degree (1911) and Ph.D. for Logarithmetica Britannica, part IX (1924) and VIII (1927), from the University of London. He joined the Mathematical Tables Committee of the Royal Society (1928-1947) before becoming the society’s vice chairman (1938-1947) and then chairman (1947-1948).

Alexander John Thompson died on June 17th, 1968, in Wallington, Surrey.

What is Alexander John Thompson known for?

A. J. Thompson started his new table of logarithms project in 1922 celebrating the 300th birthday of Briggs’ Arithmetica Logarithmica. At the outset, he started calculations of the logarithms table with just a single commercial mechanical calculating machine before realizing that a specially designed differential machine for processing 4 or 5 differences could make the work much easier.

Therefore, he proceeded to construct the Integrating and Differencing machine which consists of four sequentially arranged machines placed on a staircase-shaped structure and connected to each other. The German company Triumphator in Leipzig-Mölkau completed the assembly of the machine. Commercially available machines were converted to make the individual machines and the input mechanism was expanded to 13 locations (see the figure below).

Dr. A. J. Thompson’s desire to create a printing machine with mechanisms for performing calculations automatically did not succeed because of the associated high costs and the significantly long development cycle.

An in-depth description of the Thompson’s calculation method was compiled by Mr. Stephen Weiss (Die Differenzenmaschine von A. J. Thompson und die Logarithmetica Britannica).

Published works

  • Alexander John Thompson: Table of the coefficients of Everett’s central-difference interpolation formula, 1921, Cambridge: University Press (2nd edition in 1943)Alexander John Thompson: Henry Briggs and His Work on Logarithms, The American Mathematical Monthly, 32(3), March 1925, pp. 129–131Alexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica [Texte imprimé]: being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places of the numbers 10,000 to 100,000, 2 volumes, 1952, Cambridge: University Press, reprinted in 1967, formerly issued in 9 parts:Alexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part I, Numbers 10,000 to 20,000, 1934, Cambridge: University PressAlexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part II, Numbers 20,000 to 30,000, 1952, Cambridge: University PressAlexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part III, Numbers 30,000 to 40,000, 1937, Cambridge: University PressAlexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part IV, Numbers 40,000 to 50,000, 1928, Cambridge: University PressAlexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part V, Numbers 50,000 to 60,000, 1931, Cambridge: University PressAlexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part VI, Numbers 60,000 to 70,000, 1933, Cambridge: University PressAlexander John Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part VII, Numbers 70,000 to 80,000, 1935, Cambridge: University PressA. J. Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part VIII, Numbers 80,000 to 90,000, 1927, Cambridge: University PressA. J. Thompson: Logarithmetica britannica, being a standard table of logarithms to twenty decimal places. Part IX, Numbers 90,000 to 100,000, 1924, Cambridge: University Press

There is apparently a Russian translation, Logarifmy čisel ot 10000 do 55000, Logarifmy čisel ot 55000 do 100000, published in Moscow in 1961 and again in 1972.

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