Topic: Thomas Harriot

Bio: Robyn Arianrhod is an Australian historian of science known for her works on the predecessors to Albert Einstein, on Émilie du Châtelet and Mary Somerville, and on Thomas Harriot.

Arianrhod earned a bachelor’s degree from Monash University in 1993, and a doctorate from Monash University in 2003. She remains affiliated with Monash University as an honorary research associate in the mathematical sciences.

Her first book was “Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World through the Language of Mathematics” (University of Queensland Press and Oxford University Press, 2005); followed by “Seduced by Logic: Émilie du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution” (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Her newest book is “Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science” (Oxford University Press, 2019). A biography of 16th-century English polymath Thomas Harriot, it also establishes Harriot’s contributions to astronomy, optics, physics, cartography, ethnology, and linguistics, which until recently had been little known, in part because of Harriot’s failure to publish his discoveries.