Nathaniel Bowditch: A Nearly Forgotten Mathematician

 Today while I was looking at a translation of the mammoth Mécanique céleste of Laplace, I found a biography of the man who made the translation, Nathaniel Bowditch. This was exciting, because I was dying to know what kind of person not only translates thousands of pages of dense, mathematical and physical French, but provides detailed notes explaining reasoning throughout. It's easy to wonder, how could anyone achieve something like that? What kind of time and dedication would be required? 

The life of Bowditch is summarized neatly on Wikipedia, and much more detail is given in the introduction to Volume 4 of his translation of the Mécanique Céleste. I highly recommend learning more about him, for he is one of the most interesting people I've ever stumbled upon. 

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