Thomas Harriot

Thomas Harriot (c. 1560 – 2 July 1621) was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator. Very little of his work on astronomy, mathematics, and navigation was published during his lifetime. On the 5th of August 1609 he became the first — a few months before Galileo — to make a drawing of the Moon based upon observations through a telescope.

Quotes

• There is an herb which is sowed apart by itself & is called by the inhabitants Uppówoc: In the West Indies it has divers names, according to the several places & countries where it grows and is used: The Spaniards generally call it Tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried and brought into powder: they use to take the fume or smoke thereof by sucking it through pipes made of clay into their stomach and head; from whence it purges superfluous phlegm & other gross humors, opens all the pores & passages of the body: by which means the use thereof, not only preserves the body from obstructions; but also if any be, so that they have not been of too long continuance, in short time breaks them: whereby their bodies are notably preserved in health, & know not many grievous diseases wherewithal we in England are oftentimes afflicted.
  • A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. London. 1590.  (1st edition, 1588)

Quotes about Thomas Harriot

• ... He was among the first Europeans to acquire a working knowledge of a North American language—in this case, North Carolina Algonquian—and by means of it to understand and record indigenous culture at the time of first contact with Europeans. Outgoing and amiable, he made friends with the people, hunted and feasted with them, learned their methods of agriculture, canoe building, and fishing, and clearly enjoyed much about their way of life. As a general rule, he recorded what he saw with the detachment of a physicist and the engagement of a linguist and ethnologist, describing rather than judging religious practices and cultural ceremonies that were completely alien to him, and observing in context the details of Algonquian life.
  • Robyn Arianrhod, Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science. Oxford University Press. 2019. pp. 1–2. 

• By the end of the 16th century with the work of Viète and especially during the first half of the 17th century in the work of Harriot, Fermat, and Descartes, mathematicians began to treat algebra more symbolically, eventually adopting a notation that readily lends itself to making algebraic computations.
  • Calvin Jongsma Review of Taming the Unknown: A History of Algebra from Antiquity to the Early Twentieth Century by Victor J. Katz and Karen Hunger Parshall. MAA Reviews, Mathematical Association of America (February 26, 2015).

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Thomas Harriot on Wikipedia
• Media related to Thomas Harriot on Wikimedia Commons