High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Thomas Harriot (Oxford, c. 1560 – London, 2 July 1621) was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer, and translator. Some sources give his surname as Harriott or Hariot or Heriot. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to Great Britain and Ireland. Harriot was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on July 26, 1609, over four months before Galileo.