4-19-1739

Nicholas Saunderson died of scurvy at age 56 in Cambridge, England. At age 1 he became blind from smallpox. This did not prevent him from learning Greek, Latin and French and "hearing" the works of Euclid, Archimedes, and Diophantus in the original, learning some parts by heart. He created a "palpable arithmetic," a nailboard for doing arithmetic and forming diagrams with silk threads---the forerunner of the geoboard. He became Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge in 1711 and earned a reputation as an excellent teacher.

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