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Thomas Harriot (also spelled "Hariot"; "Heriot"; "Harriots"; and so on) was among the most distinguished of the Elizabethan polymaths. According to his epitaph, he "cultivated all the sciences / And excelled in all." Indeed, his friend the poet George Chapman called him "master of all essential and true knowledge." He was a valued intellectual servant of several noblemen, an expert mathematician and astronomer, and a pioneering ethnographer and linguist. In spite of the paucity of his published work, Harriot was an extremely influential scholar and remains an exceptional representative of his age.
As Anthony à Wood put it, Harriot "tumbled out of his mother's womb into the lap of the Oxonian Muses [in] 1560." Although many Harriots have been identified, it is impossible to trace Thomas's lineage or to assign him a birthplace more precise than Oxfordshire. Nothing is known of his early years, and the first official notice of him came on 20 December 1577, when he was entered in the Matriculation Records of Saint Mary's Hall, Oxford.
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