Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science

Arianrhod (Seduced by Logic), a research fellow at Monash University, skillfully introduces readers to Thomas Harriot, an Elizabethan who helped lay the foundations of modern physics with his adventurous discoveries, yet eluded the limelight. Among these contributions, Harriot played a part in establishing the first European trading base in North America, mapped the moon by telescope before Galileo, and investigated gravity and the visual spectrum nearly 100 years before Newton. After he graduated from Oxford in 1580, Harriot’s restless intellect soon earned him a patron and lifelong friend in Walter Raleigh, a “rising star” in Queen Elizabeth’s court. Harriot trained the navigators for Raleigh’s expeditions to North America, and acted as cultural liaison to the Carolina Algonquians near Raleigh’s outpost on Roanoke Island (several years before that colony’s famous disappearance.) After his return to England, Harriot’s curiosity led him to study probability, then optics. He developed an algebraic precalculus to describe the motion of falling objects and showed how to solve complex equations in multiple dimensions. Arianrhod’s seamless blend of storytelling and science puts Harriot into full historical context. Though he inhabited a world of court intrigues, plague, and political upheaval, Harriot’s unflagging intellectual curiosity set him apart then, and makes him more than worthy of respect now, as this fascinating biography amply proves. [em](May) [/em]