Nathaniel Bowditch was an American astronomer and mathematician. He is known as an author of American book on navigation, which was considered the best of his time, and also as a translator from the French of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Celestial Mechanics.
Background
Nathaniel Bowditch was born on March 26, 1773, in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the fourth of seven children of the shipmaster and cooper, Habakkuk Bowditch, by his wife Mary Ingersoll.
His Bowditch ancestors were residents of Thorncombe, Dorsetshire, England, for at least one hundred and fifty years before the American founder of his family, a clothier, arrived at Salem, Massachusets, in 1671.
Education
His family's circumstances were so straitened that Nathaniel left school shortly after his tenth birthday to assist in his father's cooper shop. At about the age of twelve, he became a clerk or apprentice in a ship-chandlery, an occupation which he continued until his first voyage in 1795. During these years he was constantly reading and studying. With a very retentive memory, he acquired a vast fund of general information by reading every article in the four folio volumes of Chambers' Cyclopædia and Supplement.
Nathaniel Bowditch began the study of algebra when fourteen years of age, constructed an almanac for 1790 when he was fifteen, studied French, and Euclid's Elements, and commenced at seventeen the acquisition of Latin in order to read Newton's Principia, which with volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society of London, and many other scientific works was for him a source of constant inspiration and delight.
Although every spare moment was devoted to study, he was popular with the crews and always ready to talk to them about the subjects engrossing his attention. He improved his knowledge of languages, especially Spanish, continued mathematical reading, and, on the suggestion of a publisher at Newburyport, Massachusetts, checked up the accuracy of the popular English work of J. H. Moore, The Practical Navigator.
Career
Between January 11, 1795, and December 25, 1803, Bowditch made five voyages, the first in the capacity of clerk, the next three as supercargo, and the last as master and supercargo. In this way, being a keen observer, he became somewhat acquainted with many peoples in such places as Lisbon, Cadiz, Madeira, Réunion, Sumatra, Batavia, and Manila, and his journals of the voyages contain many interesting passages.
From the thirteenth English edition of this work was prepared, in 1799, the first American edition "improved revised and corrected by a skillful mathematician and navigator". This was Bowditch's first publication.
A second edition appeared in 1800. After preparing copy for a third edition, the additions to the original work were so numerous that it was decided to issue the volume under a different title, The New American Practical Navigator as if Nathaniel Bowditch alone were the author; the book was mostly printed, but not published, in 1801.
The printed copy was sold for 200 guineas to the English publishers of Moore's work on condition that the American and English editions should appear simultaneously in June 1802.
The English edition was edited by Thomas Kirby. A thirty-six-page appendix to the first American edition was published in 1804. Nine other editions appeared during Bowditch's life, the last being the tenth in 1837. At least fifty-six further editions or reprints have since appeared under various auspices and editing. A few sections were translated into German by A. Hirsch.
In 1844, Bowditch's Useful Tables were reprinted from the work and of these, there have been at least seventeen editions or reprints.
During the first third of the nineteenth century, the Bowditch-Moore work was the best of its kind in the English language. Bowditch's practical knowledge of this subject, acquaintance with various tables published, and his gift of clear exposition, accuracy in computation, and thoroughness, contributed notably to this result.
After his third voyage, in 1799, Bowditch was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of which he was afterward to be president for the last nine years of his life. In 1802, shortly before he started on his fifth voyage, Harvard University conferred on him the honorary degree of Master of Arts, greatly to his surprise and gratification.
It was about this time that he won the ardent admiration of a prominent Salem captain by translating a Spanish business document; this resulted in 1804 in his appointment as president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company, an office which he conducted with great sagacity and success till his removal to Boston in 1823 to become (at more than three times his previous salary) actuary of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company, a position which he held till his death.
To the period of Bowditch's residence in Salem belongs practically all of his scientific activity. Apart from the work already mentioned, and a dozen problems proposed and solved in the five numbers of Adrain's Analyst (1808 and 1814), he made an admirable chart of the harbors of Salem, Beverly, and Manchester from a survey taken during 1804-06.
But much more important were the twenty-three papers published (1804 - 20) in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the preparation of the translation, with much of the commentary, of the first four volumes (Paris, 1799 - 1805) of Laplace's Mecanique celeste.
Indeed this latter work was done before 1818, although publication did not take place till 1829-39. The delay was caused by the fact that in wishing to preserve his entire independence Bowditch declined both the suggestion to publish his work by subscription, and the offer of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to publish it at its own expense, and had to arrange his finances so as to have $12, 000 available for publication expenses. So elaborate were the notes, in elucidation and in attempting to bring the subjects up to date, that the completed work contained nearly four thousand quarto pages and was considerably more than double the size of the original.
Most of Bowditch's twenty-three papers mentioned above dealt with astronomical and nautical matters. Those on the orbits of the comets of 1807, 1811, and 1819 were based on an enormous mass of calculations still preserved.
Bowditch was not a genius or discoverer, but rather a singularly sagacious critic, of the Delambre type, with an exceptionally endowed mind. That he won such a prominent place among early American intellectuals, and accomplished so much of a scientific nature, while most of his time was devoted to other affairs, was mainly due to his methodical habits, mental alertness, and indefatigable energy.
Membership
Bowditch was elected as a member of the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and London.
Personality
Inflexible integrity, loftiness of purpose, warmth of heart, simplicity of bearing, and the entire absence of selfish ambition were personal characteristics of Bowditch to offset occasional lapses in good judgment and unwise impetuosity of speech.
In appearance, he was slight of stature, "with high forehead, bright and penetrating eye, open and intelligent countenance. "
The best portrait of him is the one by Gilbert Stuart, his last work (1828). It is unfinished, only the head being painted and that not entirely completed. The hair is gray and the eyes grayish brown.
Connections
Nathaniel Bowditch was married to Mary Boardman, March 25, 1798. His secondmarriage was to Mary Ingersoll (cousin), October 28, 1800.