Text Box: Nathaniel Bowditch was born March 26, 1773, in Salem, Massachusetts. This son of a shipmaster was forced because of family finances to leave school at the age of ten to help his father at his cooperage. When he was 12 he went to work as a bookkeeping apprentice at a ship chandlery. While there he began to study on his own. He studied Latin, French and mathematics. At the age of 16 he taught himself calculus. In his early twenties he went to sea making at least five voyages. Both industrious and bright, he worked his way up from clerk to shipmaster by 1803. All the while he continued his studies, particularly mathematics and the sciences.    At 17 Bowditch read Isaac Newton’s Philosopiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. He wrote to a professor at Harvard University pointing out an error in Newton’s masterpiece. He translated Pierre-Simon LaPlace’s Mechanique Celeste, a major work on mathematics and astronomy. Fortunately for Bowditch he had at his disposal the library of the eminent Irish scientist Richard Kirwan. The books had come to Salem thanks to a local privateer that had seized a ship carrying the library between Ireland and England. The books found their way ultimately to the Salem Athenćum, a library that Bowditch used frequently in the process of self education.     In 1804 Bowditch became president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company. By this time Bowditch had earned a significant reputation. He was elected for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799. Ten years later he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society. Harvard offered him the chair of its mathematics department, but he turned it down. He turned down similar offers from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the University of Virginia.     Perhaps the accomplishment Bowditch is best known for is his New American Practical Navigator. He had worked with the London publisher of John Hamilton Moore’s famous Navigator. He soon discovered that the book that so many ships depended on was replete with errors. Bowditch contacted the American publisher of Navigator, who asked Bowditch if he would revise the latest edition of Navigator.          Bowditch found so many errors that he decided to write his own book. The result was his New American Practical Navigator. The most recent of edition of this navigational bible (there have been more than 75 printings) is still found on every American naval ship. The wonder of this book is that it was written in a way that any sailor could use it to navigate. Bowditch had actually tested it with seaman as he wrote it, for he did not want it to be so impenetrable that only a mathematician could understand it. □                        Home     Return to More Salem Info                            Contact Salem Focus at   salemfocus@comcast.net

Text Box: Nathaniel Bowditch