Bowditch, Nathaniel

Nathaniel Bowditch, (born March 26, 1773, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.—died March 16, 1838, Boston, Massachusetts), self-educated American mathematician and astronomer, author of the best American book on navigation of his time and translator from the French of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Celestial Mechanics.

Bowditch’s formal education ended when he was 10 years old and family circumstances forced him to work, first for two years in his father’s cooperage shop and then as a clerk for various local shops. Between 1795 and 1799 Bowditch made four lengthy sea voyages, and in 1802 he was put in command of a merchant vessel. Throughout that period he pursued his interest in mathematics. After investigating the accuracy of The Practical Navigator, a work by the Englishman J.H. Moore, he produced a revised edition in 1799. His additions became so numerous that in 1802 he published The New American Practical Navigator, based on Moore’s book, which was adopted by the U.S. Department of the Navy and went through some 60 editions.

Bowditch also wrote many scientific papers, one of which, on the motion of a pendulum swinging simultaneously about two axes at right angles (to illustrate the apparent motion of the Earth as viewed from the Moon), described the so-called Bowditch curves (better known as the Lissajous figures, after the man who later studied them in detail).

Bowditch provided a masterful translation of the first four volumes of Laplace’s monumental work on the gravitation of heavenly bodies, Traité de mécanique céleste (1799–1827). To help with the difficulty of the mathematics, Bowditch provided an extensive commentary that more than doubled the size of the original. The resulting work, Celestial Mechanics, was published in four volumes in 1829–39 to widespread international acclaim. Bowditch wrote several notes on the fifth and final volume but died before he was able to complete the translation.

Bowditch refused professorships at several universities. He was president (1804–23) of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Salem and worked as an actuary (1823–38) for the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company of Boston. In recognition of his achievements he was admitted as an honorary member to several foreign academies, including the Royal Society. From 1829 until his death he was president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.