Dromo's Den

[Up] [Dromo's Den]

Nathaniel Bowditch Biography

Nathaniel Bowditch Image

BOWDITCH, Nathaniel (1773-1838). An American astronomer and mathematician, born in Salem, Mass. He showed at a very early age an inclination for mathematics, though he was bred to his father's trade of a cooper and was afterward apprenticed to a ship chandler. He acquired Latin that he might study Newton's Principia. He particularly devoted himself to the study of the practical applications of science. He went as supercargo of a merchant ship in several long voyages and added a thorough practical acquaintance with navigation to a theoretical knowledge of it. His work, The New American Practical Navigator (1802, 1912), was made the standard authority of the United States Navy Department on the subject of navigation, and under direction of the Secretary of the Navy it was revised in 1880, 1903, and 1911. A new and revised edition of his Useful Tables from the American Practical Navigator was also issued in 1912 under orders of the department. He published also an admirable translation of Laplace's Mécanique céleste (2 vols., Boston, 1829) , to which he added valuable annotations. These works obtained for him marks of honor from scientific societies in Great Britain and led to his being called to the professorship of mathematics and astronomy in Harvard College, which position, however, he declined, in order to enter the executive council of the State. Consult N. I. Bowditch, Memoir of Nathaniel Bowditch (Boston, 18:39).

BOWDITCHES PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR. A compendium of information for navigators. It contains explanations of all the ordinary methods of determining the ship's position at sea, together with all the tables necessary for using them; also descriptions of instruments used in navigation, methods of making hydrographic surveys, charts, etc. The copyright of this work was purchased by the United States government, and it is now published and issued by the Hydrographic Office, United States Navy. It has been several times revised, and a considerable amount of matter has been added.