Thomas Harriot

Born in Oxford in about 1560, Thomas Harriot was an English mathematician, astronomer, and natural philosopher whose work ranged across algebra, optics, cartography, and navigation. He studied at the University of Oxford and later worked with powerful patrons including Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.

Harriot is especially remembered for joining the English effort to understand and promote colonization in North America. He traveled to Roanoke in the 1580s, studied the local environment and Algonquian language, and wrote A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, an important early English account of the region.

He also made notable scientific observations, including telescopic drawings of the Moon in 1609, around the same time as Galileo's early work. Although much of his research was unpublished in his lifetime, later historians have recognized him as one of the most original and wide-ranging scientific minds of his age.