Thomas Harriot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Thomas Harriot
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This picture is often said to be Thomas Harriot (from 1602). It hangs in Trinity College, Oxford. We don't know for sure if it's really him.
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| Born | c. 1560 |
| Died | 2 July 1621 (aged 60–61) London, England
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| Nationality | English |
| Alma mater | St Mary Hall, Oxford |
| Known for |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy, mathematics, ethnography |
Thomas Harriot (/ˈhæriət/; around 1560 – 2 July 1621) was an English astronomer, mathematician, and ethnographer. He was also a translator. Many people believe he was the first to explain how light bends, a process called refraction.
Harriot also helped create better ways to navigate ships. He worked closely with John White to make advanced maps. Even though Harriot wrote many papers on space, math, and navigation, he didn't publish much of his work. His most famous book was The Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588). This book described early English settlements and money matters in Virginia.
Some people say Harriot brought the potato to the British Isles. He also invented a way of writing numbers using only 0s and 1s (binary notation). He did this many years before Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, but it wasn't known until the 1920s. Harriot was also the first person to draw the Moon using a telescope. He did this on August 5, 1609, which was about four months before Galileo Galilei.
After finishing his studies at St Mary Hall, Oxford, Harriot traveled to the Americas. He joined an expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585. This trip was paid for by Sir Walter Raleigh and led by Sir Ralph Lane. Harriot learned the Carolina Algonquian language from two Native Americans, Wanchese and Manteo. This made him a very important part of the expedition. When he returned to England, he worked for the 9th Earl of Northumberland.
Contents
Thomas Harriot's Life Story
Early Life and Education
Thomas Harriot was born in 1560 in Oxford, England. He went to St Mary Hall, Oxford for his education. Records show his name there from 1577.
After getting his degree from Oxford University, Harriot started studying navigation. He focused on how to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. He used tools like the astrolabe and sextants to help him. Harriot combined his knowledge of space and sea travel. He then taught his navigation skills to other ship captains. He wrote down his discoveries in a book called the Articon, but this book was later lost.
Exploring Roanoke Island
After graduating from Oxford in 1580, Sir Walter Raleigh hired Harriot. He worked as a math tutor. Harriot used his knowledge of astronomy to help Raleigh. He gave advice on navigation, helped design ships, and managed money. Before his trip with Raleigh, Harriot wrote a paper on navigation.
He worked to communicate with Manteo and Wanchese. These two Native Americans had come to England. Harriot even created a special alphabet to write down their Carolina Algonquian language.
Harriot and Manteo spent a lot of time together. Harriot asked Manteo many questions about life in the New World. He learned a lot that helped the English settlers. Harriot also wrote about how amazed the Native Americans were by European technology:
- "Many things they saw with us... like math tools, sea compasses... and clocks that seemed to move by themselves. Many other things we had were so strange to them. They couldn't understand how they were made. They thought these things were made by gods, not by people."
Harriot went on only one expedition, around 1585–86. He spent time in the New World, visiting Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. He learned even more about the Carolina Algonquian language. Harriot was the only Englishman who knew Algonquin before the trip. This made him very important for the expedition to succeed.
His book about the trip, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, came out in 1588. It was probably written a year before. This book gave an early description of the Native American people the expedition met. It greatly influenced later English explorers and settlers. He wrote that he hoped the Native Americans could learn English ways. His book also talked about minerals and resources that could be taken from the land.
As a science advisor on the trip, Raleigh asked Harriot to find the best way to stack cannonballs on a ship. Harriot's ideas about how to pack spheres closely were very advanced. They were similar to modern ideas about atoms. His letters about optics with Johannes Kepler later influenced Kepler's conjecture.
Later Years and Discoveries
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For many years, Harriot worked for Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland. He lived at Syon House, which was managed by Henry Percy's cousin, Thomas Percy.
The Earl of Northumberland was a supporter of many scholars. He gave Harriot a stable place to work. In 1595, the Duke gave Harriot land in Durham. This helped Harriot move up in society. Soon after, the Duke let Harriot use a house at Syon. There, Harriot worked on optics and the law of refraction.
Harriot's supporters started to face problems. Raleigh was the first. Then, Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, was put in prison in 1605. This was because of his connection to the Gunpowder Plot. Harriot himself was questioned and briefly jailed, but he was soon released. Other scientists like Walter Warner and William Lower also worked for the Earl.
During this time, Harriot kept working on astronomy. In 1607, he used his notes from watching Halley's Comet. This helped him understand its path better. Soon after, in 1609 and 1610, Harriot studied the Moon and saw sunspots for the first time.
In early 1609, he bought a "Dutch trunke," which was a telescope invented in 1608. His observations were among the first uses of a telescope for astronomy. Harriot is now known as the first astronomer to draw a space object after seeing it through a telescope. He drew a map of the Moon on August 5, 1609. This was several months before Galileo Galilei. By 1613, Harriot had made two maps of the whole Moon. They showed many features like lunar craters in their correct places. These maps were not improved for many decades. He also saw sunspots in December 1610.
Death and Legacy
From 1614, Harriot was treated by Theodore de Mayerne, a doctor for King James I. Harriot had a serious illness that affected his nose and lip. This illness got worse until 1621. He was living with a friend, Thomas Buckner, on Threadneedle Street. He died there, likely from skin cancer.
Harriot died on July 2, 1621. This was three days after he wrote his will. His friends published his book on algebra, Artis Analyticae Praxis, in 1631. Nathaniel Torporley was supposed to publish it, but Walter Warner finished the book. It was a collection of some of his works. However, it did not include all of his unpublished writings, which were over 400 pages.
Thomas Harriot was buried in the church of St Christopher le Stocks in Threadneedle Street. The church was later damaged in the Great Fire of London. It was torn down in 1781 to make way for the Bank of England.
Harriot's Lasting Impact
Harriot also studied optics (how light works) and refraction (how light bends). He seems to have discovered Snell's law 20 years before Snellius. Like many of his works, this discovery was not published. In Virginia, he learned the local Algonquian language. This might have affected his mathematical ideas.
He helped start the "English school" of algebra. Around 1600, he created algebraic symbols that are very similar to what we use today. This made working with unknown numbers as easy as working with regular numbers. He is also given credit for discovering Girard's theorem. However, the formula is named after Girard because he was the first to publish it.
His algebra book Artis Analyticae Praxis (1631) was published after he died. It was written in Latin. Sadly, the people who edited it didn't understand all of his ideas. They removed parts they didn't get, like negative and complex roots of equations. Because Harriot's writings were spread out, a full English translation of the Praxis wasn't finished until 2007. Another more complete manuscript was published in 2009.
The first book about Harriot's life was written in 1876 by Henry Stevens. But it wasn't published until 1900, after Stevens died. Only 167 copies were made, so it wasn't widely known until a new edition came out in 1972. The poet Muriel Rukeyser also wrote a book about Harriot in 1970. Interest in Harriot grew with a meeting at the University of Delaware in 1971. The editor, John W. Shirley, later published more books about Harriot.
Harriot's achievements are not widely known because he didn't publish his results. Also, many of his writings have been lost. The ones that still exist are in the British Museum and in the Percy family archives. People often accused him of not believing in God. It's thought that he might have avoided publishing to avoid more attacks. As one historian said, "he preferred life to fame."
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An event was held at Syon House, West London, to celebrate 400 years since Harriot first saw the Moon. This was on July 26, 2009. The event, called Telescope400, included the unveiling of a plaque for Harriot by Lord Egremont. Visitors to Syon House can now see the plaque. Harriot's drawing from 400 years earlier is believed to be the first drawing of the Moon seen through a telescope. This event was part of the International Year of Astronomy.
Original papers showing Harriot's Moon map from around 1611 were on display. His observations of Jupiter's moons and first sunspot sightings were also shown. These were at the Science Museum, London, from July 23, 2009, until the end of the International Year of Astronomy.
The observatory at the College of William & Mary is named after Harriot. A crater on the Moon was named after him in 1970. It is on the far side of the Moon, so we can't see it from Earth.
In July 2014, the International Astronomical Union started a project called NameExoWorlds. This project allowed people to suggest and vote on names for planets outside our solar system and their stars. In December 2015, the IAU announced that the winning name for a planet was Harriot. This planet is 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer. The name was suggested by a group in the Netherlands. It honors the astronomer.
The Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC is named after Harriot. This is to recognize his science contributions to the New World. This includes his book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.
In Fiction
A short story called "Harriott Publishes" imagines what would happen if Harriot published his observations before Galileo. It appears in a collection of similar stories called Altered Times.
Telescope and Moon Mapping
Harriot's drawings of the Moon from August 5, 1609, are the first known telescopic observations ever made. They were done almost four months before Galileo Galilei's observation on November 30, 1609. Galileo's drawings were the first to be published. They showed more details, like mountains and craters that were not known before.
Harriot's drawing of the Moon's crescent was not perfectly accurate. He also didn't draw the craters in their exact positions. He didn't show the relief details along the Moon's light/dark line, called the lunar terminator. Some critics said Harriot's drawing was not very good. However, both scientists' drawings were valuable because they focused on different things. Galileo described the Moon's surface like a map of land. Harriot used ideas from map-making to show his views of the Moon.
Harriot used a 6X Dutch telescope to look at the Moon. His notes and drawings were very simple. This made them hard for later scientists to study. Galileo's observations of the Moon were published in his book Sidereus Nuncius in 1610. Harriot's observations were published much later, in 1784, with some not appearing until 1965. It is thought that Harriot didn't publish his work because of problems with the Ninth Earl of Northumberland and the Gunpowder Plot. Harriot was also known to have read and admired Galileo's work in Sidereus Nuncius. Harriot continued to observe the Moon until 1612.
Observing Sunspots
Thomas Harriot is known as the first person to see sunspots in 1610 using a telescope. Harriot looked at the sunspots directly through his telescope. Even though he did this, there are no records of him hurting his eyes. Harriot drew 190 pictures of the sunspots. These drawings showed details about how the Sun rotates. Like many of Harriot's other notes, his sunspot drawings were not published.
Galileo also saw sunspots and published his findings in 1613. We don't know exactly how Harriot set up his telescope. However, we know he used different magnifications, often 10X and 20X power. Harriot chose to watch sunspots after sunrise. This made it easier to see them. Harriot's notes show he recorded a total of 690 sunspot observations. Harriot's findings challenged the old idea that the heavens never changed. He explained the Sun's rotation. This also supported the heliocentric theory, which says the Earth goes around the Sun.
Understanding Compounding
Around 1620, Harriot's unpublished papers included early ideas about continuous compounding. Harriot used modern math ideas to explain how continuous compounding works. Compounded interest means that the more often interest is added within a year, the larger the final interest will be. This is true if the interest rate stays the same. Based on this, Harriot created math equations. These equations included logarithms and series calculations to show his ideas.
See also
In Spanish: Thomas Harriot para niños
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