Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science

As Robyn Arianrhod shows in this new biography, the most complete to date, Thomas Harriot was a pioneer in both the figurative and literal sense. Navigational adviser and loyal friend to Sir Walter Ralegh, Harriot—whose life was almost exactly contemporaneous to Shakespeare's—took part in the first expedition to colonize Virginia in 1585. Not only was he responsible for getting Ralegh's ships safely to harbor in the New World, he was also the first European to acquire a working knowledge of...