Thomas Harriot

Thomas Harriot, also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, lived from about 1560 to 2 July 1621 and was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator to whom the theory of refraction is attributed. He also contributed to navigational techniques, working with John White on advanced maps, but he remains obscure because he published little, only A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia in 1588. After graduating from St Mary Hall, Oxford, he accompanied the 1585 expedition to Roanoke island funded by Sir Walter Raleigh, learning the Carolina Algonquian language from Wanchese and Manteo and serving as a translator, and on his return he worked for the ninth Earl of Northumberland. He invented binary notation and arithmetic several decades before Leibniz, though this remained unknown until the 1920s, and on 5 August 1609 he made the first drawing of the Moon through a telescope, about four months before Galileo.