Thomas Harriot

c. 1560 — July 2, 1621 — London, England

Thomas Harriot was an English mathematician, astronomer, and ethnographer whose scientific achievements were extraordinary — and largely unknown during his lifetime because he published almost nothing. He made telescopic observations of the moon and Jupiter's moons independently of, and possibly before, Galileo; he made major advances in algebraic notation; and he was one of the first Europeans to encounter Native American culture during England's early colonization of North America.

Early Life and Virginia

Harriot studied at Oxford and graduated in 1580. He entered the service of Sir Walter Raleigh, who sent him to the Virginia colony in 1585–86 as a scientific observer and surveyor. There he encountered the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the region, learned their language — one of the first Europeans to do so — and produced A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), an account that remains one of the most important early documents of Anglo-American contact. He attempted to represent the Algonquian language phonetically in a system of his own devising — a remarkable early exercise in linguistic fieldwork. On returning to England he continued his scientific work under the patronage of Raleigh and later the Earl of Northumberland.

Astronomy and Mathematics

Harriot's astronomical work is among the most remarkable of the early seventeenth century. On July 26, 1609 — months before Galileo pointed his telescope at the moon — Harriot made a telescopic drawing of the lunar surface, the first such observation in history. He went on to observe sunspots, Jupiter's moons, and the moons of Jupiter, making systematic records of his findings. In mathematics, his Artis Analyticae Praxis (published posthumously in 1631) introduced the symbols < and > for less-than and greater-than, still in universal use today, and made significant advances in the theory of equations. He also worked on optics, refraction, and the physics of projectile motion. Despite this extraordinary output, he published only one work in his lifetime.

Legacy

Harriot died on July 2, 1621, of a cancerous tumor on his nose — possibly related to his practice of smoking tobacco, which he had introduced to England from Virginia. His manuscripts, preserved in large numbers, have gradually revealed the full extent of his achievements to later scholars. He represents one of the most striking cases in the history of science of a major figure whose contributions were lost to obscurity through a failure to publish, only to be rediscovered and belatedly honored centuries after his death.