The Blind Teacher

Join Professor Chris Mounsey to find out about the life of Nicholas Saunderson, who, though blind, was a Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University between 1711 and 1739. Chris will draw on his own experiences as a partially sighted Professor in Eighteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Winchester.

You will learn how the sources available about Saunderson, written by six sighted men, have been used to construct the idea of him as a teacher. Chris will explore a set of lecture notes by Saunderson on Isaac Newton’s ‘Principia Mathematica’, held within Wellcome Collection, Denis Diderot’s ‘Lettre sur les Auvergles’, and Saunderson’s own ‘Elements of Algebra’.

The talk will reveal how Saunderson helped his students to think in a spatial way about mathematics through his own experience of sight loss. It also introduces the language of ‘Variability’ as a new way to talk inclusively about people who have hitherto been labelled ‘disabled’.

The event will take place in our building and will be livestreamed on Wellcome Collection’s YouTube channel. Both will have British Sign Language interpretation but only the online event will have captions.

You can book a ticket to join the event in-venue or online. The in-venue event starts at 15:30, while the online version begins at 16:00. A recording of the event will be available to watch afterwards.

The original texts discussed will be on display for those attending in person.