Thomas Harriot

Thomas Harriot (Oxford, ca. 1560 – London, 2 July 1621) — or spelled Harriott, Hariot, or Heriot — was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer, and translator. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles. Harriot was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 26 July 1609, over four months before Galileo. He is described by Fauvel and Goulding as "the greatest mathematician that Oxford has produced".

"We know very little of Harriot's youth. In fact all that is known is that on Friday 20 December 1577 he matriculated at the University of Oxford with an entry in the official records giving his age as seventeen, his father as a plebeian, and his birthplace Oxfordshire. It is from this record that his date of birth is deduced to be 1560 and we know that his father was a "commoner" but the very fact that Harriot was entering Oxford means that it is unlikely that he came from the poorest classes. Despite extensive searches of the Oxfordshire records, no further information concerning his birth or parentage has been found (although a number of possible relatives have been identified)."

Sources

• University of St Andrews: Thomas Harriot
• Wikipedia: Thomas Harriot
• [https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/harriot-hariot-or]