Stifels, Michael

, a protestant minister, and very skilful mathematician, was born at Eslingen, a town in Germany; and died at Jena in Thuringia, in I 567, at fifty-eight years of age, according to Vossius, but some others say eighty. Stitels was one of the best mathematicians ol his time. He published, in the German language, a treatise on algebra, and another on the Calendar or ecclesiastical computation. But his chief work is the “Arithmetica Integra,” a complete and exct llent treatise, in Latin, on Arithmetic and Algebra, printed in 4to, at Norimberg, 1544. In this work there are a number of ingenious inventions, both in common arithmetic, and in algebra, and many curious things, some of which have been ascribed to a much later date, such as the triangular table for constructing progressional and figurate numbers, logarithms, &c. Stifels was a zealous, but weak uisciple of Luther, and took it into his head to become a prophet. He predicted that the end of the world would happen on a certain day in 1553, by which he terrified many people, but lived to see its fallacy, and to experience the resentment of those whom he had deluded. ²