bowditch, nathaniel

A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer who realized his childhood desire to become a ship's captain and authored the American Practical Navigator.

"Nathaniel Bowditch, a mathematician, astronomer, and insurance executive--and a major agent of Enlightenment-era change, ... took his personal work habits and blended them with the certainty and predictability of the science that he studied, creating something completely new for his time: the impersonal bureaucracy. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch shaped some of New England's most powerful institutions, from financial corporations to Harvard College, into clockwork mechanisms. He ran his insurance company with rule-bound regularity, implementing systematic and novel paperwork procedures, methodical bookkeeping practices, and standardized filing systems, helping to usher in a new era of intellectual history"--Provided by publisher.

A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer who realized his childhood desire to become a ship's captain and authored "The American Practical Navigator.".

After finding a way to teach the ship's crew members to understand navigation, Nat, a self-taught mathematician and astronomer in eighteenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, writes down his explanations and compiles them into "The American Practical Navigator," also known as the "Sailors' Bible.".

A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer who realized his childhood desire to become a ship's captain and authored The American Practical Navigator.