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Title:
Publish or Perish: The Case of Thomas Harriot
Authors:
Gingerich, Owen
Affiliation:
AA(Harvard-Smithsonian, CfA)
Publication:
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #34.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.786
Publication Date:
12/2007
Origin:
AAS
Bibliographic Code:
2007AAS...211.3401G

Abstract

In 1585 the 25-year old Thomas Harriot set foot on Roanoke Island, just inside the barrier island of what is now North Carolina but what was then called Virginia. Harriot, under the patronage of Sir Walter Raleigh, was the cartographer and navigational expert on a colonizing expedition, and he was perhaps the first scientist to take up temporary residence in North America. On his return to Britain he published, at the insistence of Raleigh, a now quite rare promotional pamphlet, A briefe and true report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588). This was the only thing he published in his lifetime, so his reputation virtually perished. Centuries later his 10,000 pages of manuscripts began to be investigated, so we now know that he anticipated Galileo in the discovery of sunspots, though his telescopic drawings of the moon were strongly influenced by what he saw in Galileo's Sidereus nuncius. Harriot corresponded briefly with Kepler, and had he shared his optical observations, the law of refraction might have become available much earlier. Harriot died in 1621 of cancer of the nose, possibly exacerbated by a habit he helped to import from America, "drinking” tobacco fumes.
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