About half a century after Thales came Pythagoras. Under his inspiration geometry was first pursued as a study for its own sake. A man of great abili… - Raymond Clare Archibald

In yesteryears there were two gloriously inspiring centers of mathematical study in America. One of these was at the University of Chicago, when , and and were in their prime. The other center was at The Johns Hopkins University, 1876–83, where scholars were " Led by soaring-genius'd Sylvester," as has expressed it in his " Ode to The Johns Hopkins University."

... in America before the end of 1888 there had been appreciable amount of mathematical research, some of it of first importance, even according to recent standards. There had been centers of mathematical inspiration. Such universities as Yale, The Johns Hopkins, and Harvard, had been sending out doctors in mathematics for a number of years, and many Americans had been getting degrees in Europe. The time was ripe for an organization to draw together many people scattered throughout the country who were especially interested in mathematical pursuits.

The idea of constructing a table in which the logarithm of unity was zero originated with Napier. Napier and Briggs never thought of logarithms as exponents of a base. ... It was not till considerably later that our modern definition of a logarithm as an exponent was put forward by such mathematicians as , 1684; , 1742; , 1748, 1770.