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...