[inasio]

(I'm sure this is in the book) John Napier, the father of logarithms (the N in ln), basically had a sweatshop of human calculators making log tables over something like 20 years - critical for celestial navigation. There was a huge price attached to the person that developed a method to safely navigate across the oceans, also lead to the invention of the pocket watch

[dekhn]

isn't the n in ln "natural" ("logarithm natural")?

[floydnoel]

yes i was taught that "ln" stood for "natural log"

would be interested to hear other definitions!