Editorial

As readers of the Bulletin will be aware, 2014 is the 400^th anniversary of the publication of John Napier's Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio which introduced the world to logarithms. The anniversary was marked by the Napier 400 meeting in Edinburgh in April, jointly organised by BSHM and the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation, and by other celebrations: a short report on the BSHM meeting can be found in this issue.

The Bulletin is delighted to publish two articles relating to the anniversary. Joachim Fischer, who spoke at the Edinburgh meeting, writes about Napier's calculations, and we present also a hitherto unpublished paper by the late D T Whiteside. For an explanation of the background to this publication, see the footnote to the article.

This issue also contains, following recent tradition, the BSHM Presidential Lecture delivered by Robin Wilson in December of last year at the Christmas Meeting in Birmingham.

We hope that readers will enjoy these articles, Lukas M. Verburgt's paper on probability theory, and the reports and reviews in this Bulletin. This being the last Bulletin of 2014, the Editor would like to take the opportunity to thank the members of the Editorial Team, Jackie Stedall, Snezana Lawrence, Benjamin Wardhaugh, Howard Emmens, June Barrow-Green, Serafina Cuomo and Raymond Flood, for their invaluable contributions.

As this issue of the Bulletin went to press we heard the very sad news that Jackie Stedall, who edited the Bulletin (originally the BSHM Newsletter) with such distinction from 2001 to 2013 and who contributed so much to the BSHM, died on 27 September 2014. We know that readers of the Bulletin will share our deep sorrow at Jackie's passing. An appreciation will appear in a future issue of the Bulletin.