England's Galileo

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string theory including Michael Green HISTORY and John Schwarz, were probing its mathematical boundaries. Whether the mathematical approach eventually became too dominant, taking England’s Galileo over in terms of academic recognition and funding, is the crux of much of Georgina Ferry relishes a biography of the formidable today’s debate. Farmelo gives a lively Moon-mapping Tudor scientist Thomas Harriot. description of the back-and-forth of contributions typical of any thriving inter- disciplinary area, with physical problems he phrase ‘publish or perish’ came into Thomas Harriot: A of the Algonquian peo- stimulating mathematical breakthroughs use in the twentieth century to encap- Life in Science ple, and of the region’s and mathematics throwing up new sulate academic pressures. It is also a ROBYN ARIANRHOD natural resources and Oxford University Press insights and techniques in physics. He Tlesson from the life of Thomas Harriot, who climate. Arianrhod (2019) steers clear of discussing the infeasibly lived when there were no academic journals, shows that his interest large ‘string landscape’ of possible physi- and who never taught at a university. in local people was far from typical: he learnt cal theories to which the mathematical A contemporary of William Shakespeare, their language, admired how they inter- approach seems to have led — contrary Harriot was an English mathematician, planted beans, squashes and maize (corn), to hopes of a unique ‘theory of eve- astronomer and natural philosopher whose and respected their religion. Meanwhile, the rything’. Instead, he concentrates on original work bears comparison with that military expedition leaders fatally soured developments more directly useful and of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei. Yet, relations by overreacting to perceived wrong testable in physics, where some of this outside the enthusiastic circle of historians doing and making unreasonable demands. mathematical sophistication begins to of early modern science who call themselves Previous biographers — the US authors feed back into an understanding of the Harrioteers, his name is almost unknown: he Henry Stevens in 1900 and John Shirley in standard model. never published his mathematical work. In 1983 — were prompted by the Brief and True The standard model is a complex, Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science, mathemati- Report. Neither fully addressed Harriot’s subtle and immensely successful theo- cian Robyn Arianrhod sets out to explain how scientific contributions, as Arianrhod tries retical structure that leaves significant historians have nevertheless been able to place to do. Harriot’s will mentioned a trunk full questions unanswered. Farmelo makes him, almost four centuries after his death in of mathematical papers. A few were circu- a convincing case that, in attempting to 1621, among the founders of modern science. lated and partly published by friends such as answer those questions, mathematics Harriot is elusive. The earliest known docu- the mathematician Walter Warner after his has a crucial role. Yet whether theoreti- ment concerning him lists him as a “plebeian” death, but what became of the collection was cal physics has become too enamoured scholar registering to study at the University unknown until 1784, when it turned up in of beautiful mathematics will, I suspect, of Oxford in 1577. He never married and left some disorder at Petworth House, home to remain a topic of hot debate. no children. By 1583, he was employed by heirs of the ninth Earl of Northumberland, The long experimental search for the Walter Raleigh, naval commander, explorer Harriot’s patron after Raleigh. Only since the Higgs was motivated by the fact that, and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, to teach mid-twentieth century have scholars made before we accepted the existence of a astronomy and navigation — a field he sense of the thousands of manuscript sheets. quantum energy field that fills the whole greatly improved — to sea captains. He was What they reveal is astonishing. To men- Universe — part of the theory that pre- celebrated in his lifetime by the writer Gabriel tion only a portion of Harriot’s work, he dis- dicted the particle — we demanded more Harvey as among the “profound mathema- covered Snell’s law of refraction two decades evidence than ‘it makes the maths come ticians”, alongside Thomas Digges and John before mathematician Willebrord Snell; for- out right’. The need for evidence is even Dee. Afterwards, he was largely forgotten. mulated laws of motion and falling bodies stronger if the argument is ‘it makes the He has a higher profile in the United States, independently of Galileo and decades before maths look beautiful’. The Universe might thanks to the one work he did publish. A Brief Isaac Newton; produced the first drawing speak in numbers, but it uses empirical and True Report of the New Found Land of Vir- of the Moon through a telescope and made data to do so. ■ ginia is a first-person account of a 1585–86 important observations of sunspots, again voyage sent by Raleigh to survey what is now independently of Galileo; played with binary Jon Butterworth is professor of physics part of North Carolina. The party landed arithmetic nearly a century before Gottfried in the Department of Physics and on Roanoke Island and surveyed it and the Wilhelm Leibniz; and was the first to develop Astronomy, University College London, nearby mainland; almost all its members fully symbolic algebra. There are well- and the author of Smashing Physics returned to England in June 1586. Harriot was grounded suspicions that René Descartes and A Map of the Invisible. He blogs at “employed in discovering”. His report, pub- saw some of Harriot’s papers before publish- lifeandphysics.com lished in 1588, includes the first detailed Eng- ing The Geometry in 1637. e-mail: [email protected] lish description of the language and customs Where Harriot falls down, say some

Magnificent Principia Mrs Moreau’s Warbler Colin Pask Prometheus (2019) Stephen Moss Faber (2019) Isaac Newton remains a giant of physics, as his Names make sense of the world; they also reveal 1687 Principia confirms. Maths historian Colin something about us. Stephen Moss unveils the Pask presents an easily digestible guide to the often surprising roots of avian etymology and work, enlivened with passages from Newton’s offers insight into fierce, long-standing debates life. An invitation to wonder at what some see as such as that over Prunella modularis, variously the greatest single scientific book ever published. known as the dunnock and hedge sparrow.

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scholars, is that he did not draw his observations into coherent theory. It’s possible he just never got round to it. Har- riot spent his adult life in the households of Raleigh and Northumberland. They paid him generously, and all appearances suggest that he was a friend rather than a servant. However, both were players on the volatile political scene, and malicious rumours of atheism and necromancy did the rounds. Soon after James I succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603, Raleigh was convicted of treason, and Northumberland of lesser charges when a cousin was involved in the Gunpowder Plot to murder the king. Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London; Raleigh was executed in 1618. Harriot spent an anxious few weeks in prison because of his association with Northumberland; he might have felt the need to keep his head down over the years. He died aged about 60 from cancer of the nose, possibly caused by his enthusiasm for tobacco after his American adventure. The lack of finished work makes evaluating his contribution complex. Arianrhod does not hesitate to call him a genius, and the evidence she presents is impressive. Yet she fully explores his rightful position in the pantheon only in a page-long endnote; I think this short changes the “general reader” she seeks to enlighten. Some might find her technical SOCIETY passages challenging, although they are necessary to her argument. And it is irk- some to see diagrams relating to Harriot’s navigational work in an appendix, rather than with the text they illustrate. How to survive Has Arianrhod, as she intended, “put a human face to scientific inquiry in the Elizabethan and Jacobean worlds”? She has revealed a scientific mind, but the face an apocalypse is more elusive: the one supposed portrait of Harriot is of unknown provenance and, Richard Rhodes weighs up Jared Diamond’s study of because of a discrepancy in dates, some national resilience in the face of catastrophe. historians doubt it is him. This black-clad, driven, sceptical man, “contented with a private life for the love he geographer Jared Diamond is the development and challenges of nations and of learning” as he wrote to his captors, still bestselling author of a number of civilizations. “History,” he argued in the 1997 declines wholly to step into the light. ■ books on the vicissitudes of civiliza- Guns, Germs, and Steel, “followed differ- Ttions. His anchoring perspective, argued ent courses for different peoples because of Georgina Ferry’s biography of Dorothy across such works as Collapse (2005) and The differences among peoples’ environments, Crowfoot Hodgkin will be published in a World Until Yesterday (2012), is geographic not because of biological differences among revised edition this year. determinism. He sees the environment peoples themselves.” His perspective has e-mail: [email protected] as fundamentally shaping the founding, been both celebrated for clarifying historical

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