1. Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838) was a self-educated astronomer and mathematician whose book, The New American Practical Navigator, went through ten editions in his lifetime, and more thereafter. Bowditch published many scientific papers in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and wrote for the North American Review as well. He was president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company, 1804–23 (PJM-PS description begins Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series (6 vols. to date; Charlottesville, Va., 1984—). description ends , 3:487 n. 1).

2. Bowditch enclosed a sixty-page collection of his astronomical writings entitled Mathematical Papers from the Fourth Volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1818).