Bowditch

Nathaniel Bowditch

Born: 26 March 1773 in Salem, Massachusetts, USA
Died: 16 March 1838 in Boston, USA

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Bowditch was a self-educated American mathematician and astronomer. He learnt Latin to study Newton's Principia and later other languages to study mathematics in these languages.

Between 1795 and 1799 he made 4 sea voyages and in 1802 he was in command of a merchant ship. His New American Practical Navigator (1802) and his translation of Laplace's Mécanique céleste gave him an international reputation. Bowditch was helped by Peirce in this project and his commentaries doubled the length of the book.

He studied Lissajous figures in 1815 while studying the motion of a pendulum suspended from 2 points.

Bowditch refused chairs of mathematics at several universities preferring his post as president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company from 1804 to 1823, working as an actuary from 1823 in the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Bowditch worked on the Lissajous Curves

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. J Pickering, Eulogy on Nathaniel Bowditch LL.D. (Boston, 1838).
  4. A Stanford, Navigator. The story of Nathaniel Bowditch (New York, 1927).
  5. R E Berry, Yankee Stargazer - The life of Nathaniel Bowditch (New York-London, 1941).
  6. J Albree, Salem's Bowditch, Mathematical Intelligencer 14 (1992), 58-60. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996