BRIGGS (William)

, an eminent physician in the latter part of the 17th century, was born at Norwich, for which town his father was four times member of parliament. He studied at the university of Cambridge. He afterwards travelled into France, where he attended the lectures of the famous anatomist Vieussens, at Montpelier. Upon his return he published his Ophthalmographia, in 1676. The year following he was made doctor of medicine at Cambridge, and soon after fellow of the college of physicians at London. In 1682 he resigned his fellowship to his brother; and the same year his Theory of Vision was published by Hook. The ensuing year he sent to the Royal Society a continuation of that discourse, which was published in their Transactions; and the same year he was appointed physician to St. Thomas's hospital. In 1684 he communicated to the Royal Society two remarkable cases relating to vision, which were likewise printed in their Transactions; and in 1685 he published a Latin version of his Theory of Vision, at the desire of Mr. Newton, afterwards Sir Isaac, then professor of mathematics at Cambridge, with a recommendatory epistle from him prefixed to it. He was afterwards made physician in ordinary to king William, and continued in great esteem for his skill in his profession till he died the 4th of September 1704.

Briggs's Logarithms, that species of them in which 1 is the logarithm of the ratio of 10 to 1, or the logarithm of 10. See Logarithms.

BROKEN Number, the same as Fraction; which see.

Broken Ray, or Ray of Refraction, in Dioptrics, is the line into which an incident ray is refracted or broken, in crossing the second medium.