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Henry Briggs (bap. 1561-1631) was an English mathematician. He is best known for his pioneering work on logarithms and his 1625 map depicting California as an island, the first English map to do so. He hailed from Yorkshire and attended St John’s College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics. In 1597, he was appointed as geometry professor at Gresham College, London, where he wrote several treatises on mathematics and navigation. Inspired by the work of John Napier, Briggs focused his research on the computation of logarithms. In 1619, Briggs took up the newly-created Saville Professorship of geometry at Oxford and lived in Merton College. He died there in 1631.