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Thomas Harriot - A Life in Science (Hardcover)
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Thomas Harriot - A Life in Science (Hardcover)
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Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was a pioneer in both the figurative and
literal sense. Navigational adviser and loyal friend to Sir Walter
Ralegh, Harriot took part in the first expedition to colonize
Virginia. Not only was he responsible for getting Ralegh's ships
safely to harbor in the New World, once there he became the first
European to acquire a working knowledge of an indigenous language
(he also began a lifelong love of tobacco, which may have been his
undoing). Harriot's abilities were seemingly unlimited and nearly
awe-inspiring. He was the first to use a telescope to map the
moon's craters, and, independently of Galileo, discovered and
recorded sunspots. He preceded Newton (whose fame eclipsed his) in
his discovery of the properties of the prism. He was arguably the
best mathematician of his age, and one of the finest experimental
scientists of all time. Yet Harriot has traditionally remained a
tantalizingly elusive character. He had no close family to pass
down records, and few of his letters survive. Most importantly, he
never published his scientific discoveries, and half a century
after his death he had all but been forgotten. In recent decades,
many (self-styled "Harrioteers") have become obsessed with
restoring to Harriot his right place, but Robyn Arianrhod's
biography is the first actually to do this, and she has done it the
only way it can be done: through his science. Using Harriot's
re-discovered manuscripts, Arianrhod illuminates the full extent of
his achievements in science and physics, expertly guiding us
through what makes them original and important, and the story
behind them. Because he hadn't yet polished them for publication,
Harriot's papers also proffer unique insight into the scientific
process itself. Though his thinking depended on a more natural,
intuitive approach than those who followed him, Harriot laid the
foundations of what in Newton's time would become modern physics.
Arianrhod's biography offers the human face of scientific
discovery, a lived example of the way in which science actually
progresses. Set against the backdrop of the Elizabethan world with
all of its dramas and creative tensions-Harriot's years almost
exactly overlap those of Shakespeare's-this biography gives proper
due to one of history's most remarkable minds.
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