Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life

by Tamara Plakins Thornton

Overview

In this engagingly written biography, 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. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch operated and represented some of New England's most powerful institutions—from financial corporations to Harvard College—as clockwork mechanisms. By examining Bowditch's pathbreaking approaches to institutions, as well as the political and social controversies they provoked, Thornton's biography sheds new light on the rise of capitalism, American science, and social elites in the early republic.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469626949
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/10/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	736,410
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Tamara Plakins Thornton is professor of history at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Thornton tells a fascinating story with considerable grace, and her conclusions make a significant contribution to the issue of social, economic, and cultural transformation in the early nineteenth century. Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers is, among other things, a fluent biography of a significant if curious American public figure who possessed a broad splash of eccentricity that any reader would enjoy encountering.—Daniel Vickers, University of British Columbia

Editorial Reviews

A superb biography . . . vivid, sometimes witty, prose . . . a deft, deeply informed account.—Thornton's "thoroughly researched, gracefully written study locates him [Bowditch] in the several historical contexts to which he belonged: New England society and culture, business management, and science . . . a major contribution to our understanding of the early republic—Richard D. Brown, New England Quarterly



Much more than a well-researched and engaging biography"—Thornton "shows how Bowditch's insistence on arithmetic order . . . a new spirit of numbers . . . contributed to a sea change in American life.—Theodore M. Porter, Journal of Interdisciplinary History



A remarkable book . . . a real pleasure to read. . . . Thornton writes beautifully and uncomplicatedly about subjects that are neither beautiful nor uncomplicated. She breathes life and excitement into ledger books, forms, and actuarial tables and paints vivid portraits of corporate board meetings. . . . a scholarly biography of Bowditch that is deeply engaged with the historiography of American capitalism—A "great achievement—Gautham Rao, American Historical Review



An enormously learned book about an intellectually challenging subject . . . [bringing] Bowditch to life in order to show us something about the power of numbers to regulate the world—a power that we now know so well we forget it was not always so."—John Lauritz Larson, Reviews in American History



[Thornton] describes in an enjoyable way the lifestyle and society of Salem, at that time a wealthy port town, second only to Boston in New England.—International Journal of Maritime History



This recommended biography rediscovers an eccentric who was key in improving several emerging industries. Readers of early American history will find a rich story that moves between New England high society and the founding of the natural sciences.—Library Journal



Lucid and intelligent . . . and an often charming account of a remarkably gifted mathematician/bureaucrat—Isis



The story of Nathaniel Bowditch is fascinating. Tamara Plakins Thornton tells it with intelligence, warmth, and abundant sympathy.—American Scientist



Thornton's biography of Bowditch is remarkably fluid and her rich narrative profiles the social, economic and cultural issues that surrounded this extremely complicated man. . . . Give[s] the reader a probing, thoughtful, descriptive work about an unorthodox, quasi-genius Yankee.—The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord



A well-researched and convincingly argued biography."–Journal for the History of Astronomy

From the Publisher

04/15/2016
Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838) was one of the first polymath figures in U.S. history and is primarily remembered as the founder of modern maritime navigation. His interests in mathematics, astronomy, and navigation took him from seafaring to work as an actuarial and insurance executive. In his later years, Bowditch focused on standardizing business practices to document business decisions. Here, Thornton (history, State Univ. of New York, Buffalo; Handwriting in America: A Cultural History) digs into contemporary publications alongside Bowditch's own scientific correspondence (he burned the personal ones before he died) to present a window into the dual worlds of business and science in the early years of the republic. Thornton traces Bowditch's early life in Salem, MA, to his work with seafaring vessels and his eventual placement on the governing board of Harvard University as the vice president for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. VERDICT This recommended biography rediscovers an eccentric who was key in improving several emerging industries. Readers of early American history will find a rich story that moves between New England high society and the founding of the natural sciences.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

Library Journal