Bowditch, NATHANIEL, an American mathematician and astronomer, born 26th March 1773, at Salem, Massachusetts. He showed at a very early age a great inclination for mathematics, in which he afterwards made great proficiency without ever attending a university. He was at first bred to his father's trade of a cooper, and afterwards apprenticed to a ship-chandler. He acquired Latin that he might study Newton's Principia, and at a later period studied French, Spanish, Italian, and German. He particularly devoted himself to the study of the practical applications of science. Between 1795 and 1803 he acted in turn as clerk, supercargo, and master of a merchant-ship in five long voyages, and added a thorough practical acquaintance with navigation to a theoretical knowledge of it. His New American Practical Navigator (1802) was received with great favour. He published also an admirable translation of Laplace's Mécanique Céleste (1829-38), to which he added valuable annotations, and upon this achievement his fame chiefly rests. These works obtained for him marks of honour from scientific societies in Europe, and led to offers, which he declined, of the professorship of Mathematics and Astronomy in Harvard College (1808), the university of Virginia (1818), and
West Point (1820). In 1823 he became actuary of the Massachusetts Life Insurance Company, and was afterwards president of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and a member of the corporation of Harvard College, from which he received the degree of LL.D. He died at Boston, 16th March 1838. See Memoir by his son (1839).