Thomas Harriot Seminar 2015

Durham Castle, University of Durham, 6-7 July 2015

The Thomas Harriot Seminar celebrates the life and times of the mathematician Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), and welcomes papers on Harriot himself as well as on the history of mathematics and science in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century more generally. We particularly welcome papers on subjects of interest to Harriot, which included: pure and applied mathematics, the new world, astronomy, natural philosophy, alchemy, optics, linguistics, and the art of war. For more information about the Seminar please visit the Thomas Harriot Seminar website:


Richard Osterhoof (CRASSH University of Cambridge) “Gabriel Harvey and the utility of mathematics”

Robert Goulding (University of Notre Dame), “Through a glass, darkly: shadows, light, and prismatic colours.”

Glyn Parry (University of Roehampton), “The Ordeal of Thomas Digges”

Cathy France (University of Leeds), “Thomas Digges and the ballistic trajectory”

Stephen Johnston (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford), “Edward Wright at Sea – Detected and Corrected”.

David Harris Sacks (Reed College, Oregon), “Learning to Know: Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Harriot in Oxford.”

Todd Andrew Borlik (University of Huddersfield), “John Dee’s ‘Hydragogie’ and Fen Drainage in the Seventeenth Century”

Susan Maxwell (Independent Scholar), “Preparing for circumnavigation: Thomas Cavendish and Francis Drake”

Registration fee: £95 (includes accommodation at the Castle, drinks reception, conference dinner on the 6th and buffet lunch on the 7th). Non-residential fee (without dinner and lunch): £35. Two bursaries are available for MA or PhD students, covering residential registration (if you would like to apply for one of these, please email the Chairman explaining why attending the seminar would be useful to your research). To register please email the Chairman Dr Stephen Clucas.


Dr Stephen Clucas
Editor, Intellectual History Review
Reader in Early Modern Intellectual History,
English and Humanities,
Birkbeck, Univesity of London,
Malet Street,
London WC1E 7HX