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The word exponent was coined in 1544 by Michael Stifel, a German monk and mathematician (McKay, n.d).
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The Scottish mathematician John Napier published his discovery of logarithms; the purpose was to assist in the multiplication of quantities that were then called sines (Murray, 2019). Napier's approach was algebraic (MccKay, n.d.).
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Though the earliest natural logarithms first appeared in 1618, their significance was not realized until much later (McKay, n.d.).
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The first table based on the concept of relating geometric and arithmetic sequences was published in Prague by the Swiss mathematician Joost Bürgi (Murray, 2019).
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A common system of logarithms was born through the collaboration of Napier and Henry Biggs (McKay, n.d.).
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John Wallis realized that logarithms could be defined as exponents (Fogleman, 2005).
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Johann Bernoulli also realized that logarithms could be defined as exponents (Fogleman, 2005).
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Euler was Swiss and spoke French, so he might have called the function "le Logarithme Naturel", rather than "the natural log", in which case, "ln" makes sense (Stapel, n.d.).
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These functions are utilized in higher mathematics and they also have applications in science, engineering, and business (McKay, n.d.).
