A talented young scientist, Thomas Harriot, wrote the first English account
of the New World, "A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virgi
nia," distinguished by its serious effort to describe and understand the Am
erican Indian, Harriot went on to make innovations in mathematics and was o
ne of the first astronomers to use the telescope. His largely unappreciated
contribution to the history of ophthalmology was the first formulation of
the sine law of refraction of light, found in his unpublished papers long a
fter his death in 1621, Willebrord Snell discovered the sine law in Holland
in 1621 but also died without formally publishing it. Rene Descartes first
published the sine law in 1637. The sine law of refraction became not only
the prime law of all lens systems but ushered in a new world of physical l
aws.