Event Description
An online conference organised by the Thomas Harriot Seminar and hosted by The Warburg Institute. Convenor: Dr Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University London)
The English mathematician and natural philosopher Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was a true Renaissance polymath, working in fields as diverse as optics, navigational mathematics, alchemy, and mechanics. This conference commemorates the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of this remarkable figure, but also celebrates the exciting new intellectual landscape through which he moved. By placing Harriot within global and local contexts, this conference aims to shed light on broader developments in the long sixteenth century.
Thursday 16 September 2021
Jessica Wolfe (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) “Realms of Gold: George Chapman and the School of — ?”
Hilary Gatti (La Sapienza, Rome) “‘They shall have cause both to feare and love us’: Thomas Harriot in the new found land of Virginia”
Makiko Okamura (Kyoto University) “Thomas Harriot’s Concept of the Universe considered in his De Infinitis manuscripts”
Amir Alexander (UCLA) “Thomas Harriot, Baconian Mathematician”
Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), “Whose practice? Francis Bacon’s rules of experientia literata in context”
Arnaud Zimmern and Don Brower (Notre Dame): Thomas Harriot Online update
Friday 17 September 2021
Robert Goulding (Notre Dame) “Walter Warner, Custodian of Harriot’s Secret of Refraction”
Jennifer M. Rampling (Princeton) “Signs and Tokens: Thomas Harriot and English Alchemy”
Kevin Gerard Tracey (Maynooth University) “Chymicus, mathematicus, ‘sometime student of this college’: Tracing the life and work of Nathaniel Torporley through his Sion College bequest (c. 1633/36)”
Pascal Brioist (University of Tours) and Jean–Jacques Brioist (Independent scholar): “Harriot’s reading of French scientific authors”
Cesare Pastorino (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice): “Harriot and Kepler on the Specific Weight of Substances: A Difference of Experimental Traditions”
Thursday 16 and Friday 17 September 2021, 15:30-20:00 BST