Thomas Harriot and His World: Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England

Abstract

Thomas Harriot is an enticing figure for many historians of science.He seems to have done everything and did these things (novel insights in the theory of equations, optics, ballistics, and astronomy to name a few) well before those who achieved recognition for their discoveries.He trained men in navigation, was on board on voyages of exploration, and took part in establishing an English colony in the New World.He made a lexicon of Algonquian and published one of the earliest accounts of America in English.He watched his patron, Ralegh, be executed and performed experiments with his next patron, Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, in the Tower of London, where Percy was imprisoned.He appears in the poetry of his friend George Chapman and seems to have associated with the same people as Christopher Marlowe.Harriot lived a fascinating life.He entices because he is intrinsically interesting and brilliant.But there is more that has drawn the historian to Harriot.Harriot is an underdog.Although his mathematics was excellent and novel, although he discovered the sine law of refraction before Descartes and Snell, although he observed the Moon through a telescope prior to Galileo, although he worked through significant problems in mechanics, he gained almost no recognition.He was largely forgotten and for many centuries assumed to be rather insignificant.Harriot excites a desire among some historians to restore

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