Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers
When:
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2016 6:00p -
7:00p
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2016 6:00p -
7:00p
Where:
Massachusetts Historical Society
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02215
Admission:
FREE
Categories:
Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
www.masshist.org/calendar
Tamara Plakins Thornton delves into the life and work of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), a man Thomas Jefferson once called a “meteor in the hemisphere.” Bowditch was a mathematician, astronomer, navigator, seafarer, and business executive whose Enlightenment-inspired perspectives shaped nineteenth-century capitalism while transforming American life more broadly. Fleshing out the multiple careers of Nathaniel Bowditch, this book is at once a lively biography, a window into the birth of bureaucracy, and a portrait of patrician life, giving us a broader, more-nuanced understanding of how powerful capitalists operated during this era and how the emerging quantitative sciences shaped the modern experience.
