Originally published on April 30, 2019 (Episode 109)
Introduction
In 2003 East Carolina University named its college of liberal arts the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences. This was in part because Thomas Harriot had been deeply involved in the first English colony in North America, sited on Roanoke Island in modern North Carolina; and because as “an adventurer, anthropologist, astronomer, author, cartographer, ethnographer, explorer, geographer, historian, linguist, mathematician, naturalist, navigator, oceanographer, philosopher, planner, scientist, surveyor, versifier and teacher,” there was hardly an area of not only the ancient but the modern liberal arts into which Harriot did not at least glance. It is not going too far to say that wherever Thomas Harriot was, there was an entire faculty of a college of arts and sciences.
Robyn Arianhrod’s new biography of Thomas Harriot gives full attention to not only his involvement in the first English attempts to colonize the North America, but to his even more important mathematical and scientific achievements. The conversation is, hopefully, a fairly painless tour through the early modern revolution in mathematics and physics.
About the Guest
Robyn Arianrhod is a mathematician and writer, author of Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution (OUP, 2012) and other works that make mathematics accessible to general audiences. Her biography of Harriot is the first full modern treatment of this remarkable figure.
For Further Investigation
Robyn Arianrhod, Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science (OUP, 2019)
—, Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution (OUP, 2012)
Roanoke Island—Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
Conversations with Richard Fidler: another podcast featuring Robyn Arianrhod speaking about her earlier book Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution
NCpedia: Thomas Harriot
Listen & Discuss
Why has Harriot been so neglected compared to his contemporaries?
How does Harriot’s story change our view of the scientific revolution?
👉 Share with someone who thinks Galileo stood alone—Harriot proves otherwise.
