Nathaniel Bowditch

A couple days ago a friend told me about the book Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, a fictional account of the life of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838). I’ve been listening to the book on Audible, and apparently it’s only lightly fictionalized. Bowditch was a self-educated mathematician and astronomer, best known for his book The American Practical Navigator, first published in 1801. The book has been continually revised over the last two centuries and is still in print, available for download from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The latest edition begins with a brief account of Bowditch’s life, confirming the essential details of the fictional biography. Two things stand out about Bowditch: his attention to detail and his desire to make ideas accessible. He taught himself Latin in order to read Newton’s Principia and followed the text so closely that he found a number of errors. Bowditch’s navigation book grew out of the numerous corrections he made to error he found in John…