A contemporary of Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Johannes Kepler, and Galilei Galileo, Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was an English scientist and mathematician. His principal biographer, J. W. Shirley, was quoted in the website "Thomas Ha rriot's manuscripts," saying that in his time he was "England's most profound mathematician, most imaginative and methodical experimental scientist, and first of all Englishmen to make a telescope and turn it on the heavens." He was also an early English explorer of North America. He published very little in his lifetime, and the extensive scientific papers he left at his death suffered loss and then neglect until the twentieth century.

Educated at Oxford

Harriot was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1560. Nothing is known about his parents except that his father was recorded as a plebeian when Harriot entered the University of Oxford on December 20, 1577. Of Harriot's early school years a boyhood fri end, Tom Buckner...