Home › B › Bowditch, Nathaniel

Bowditch, Nathaniel

mathematician, was born March 26, 1773, in Salem, Mass. He was a trustee of the Boston Athenæum, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the corporation of Harvard university. He was twice elected to the state executive council of Massachusetts and held many offices of trust and honor.

He was a famous mathematician of Salem, Mass., whose translation of La Place's Mécanique Cèleste, with extensive commentary, was his greatest work. The New American Navigator was his original work of note. He died March 16, 1838, in Boston, Mass.

BOW DITCH, NATHANIEL INGER- SOLL, conveyancer, author, was born Jan. 17, 1805, in Salem, Mass. He became noted for accuracy and industry, and it is said that scarcely a transfer of real estate was made in Boston without his examination and approval of the title. He wrote altogether fifty-five folio volumes of landtitles, containing 30,000 pages, besides He published Suffolk plans and maps.

Surnames. This work contains curious surnames met with by Mr. Bowditch in his business. Its peculiarity is in the author's system of classification by the derivation of the names. He died April 16, 1861, in Brookline, Mass.