BOWDITCH, NATHANIEL, a self-taught American mathematician, born in 1773, of humble parents, at Salem in Massachusetts. He was bred to his father's business as a cooper, and afterwards was apprenticed to a ship-chandler. His taste for mathematics early developed itself; and he acquired Latin that he might study Newton's Principia. In 1795 he sailed as supercargo, in which capacity he made four long voyages; and, being an excellent navigator, he afterwards commanded a vessel, instructing his crews in taking lunar and other observations. He edited three editions of Hamilton Moore's Navigation. In 1804 he became actuary to a Boston insurance company; and in the midst of his active and useful career published a translation of the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace, with annotations:—a work which will better prove the great acquirements of this self-taught philosopher than any laboured panegyric. He died in 1838, at Boston.