Uploaded October 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Join Professor Chris Mounsey to find out about the life of blind teacher Nicholas Saunderson, who 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. Chris Mounsey will also introduce his concept of ‘variability’ as a way of understanding disability.
Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/wellcomecollection
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/explorewellcome
See us on Instagram: instagram.com/wellcomecollection
Join Professor Chris Mounsey to find out about the life of blind teacher Nicholas Saunderson, who 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. Chris Mounsey will also introduce his concept of ‘variability’ as a way of understanding disability.
Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/wellcomecollection
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/explorewellcome
See us on Instagram: instagram.com/wellcomecollection
