Nicholas Saunderson

[kestrell]

I just discovered that there is a LucasionChair.org Web site, with this biography of Nicholas Saunderson
http://www.lucasianchair.org/18/saunderson.html
who is one of my heroes. He became blind as a baby but became a wizard at mathematics and, being one of the few people who really understood what Newton was talking about, taught optics at Cambridge, which had turned him down years earlier when he applied to be a student. He also invented his own accessible calculating device and boards for demonstrating geometrical shapes in two dimensions and geometrical forms in three dimensions (I really wish these boards were still produced by some company). Saunderson's fame was actually mostly as a teacher, since he provided such clear explanations of cutting edge mathematics that everyone came to his classes to find out what Newton was actually going on about. I love this idea of a blind person explaining light and form to a packed room of sighted people.

Btw, if you are wondering what the Lucasion Chair is, it is the chair of mathematics at Cambridge University, occupied in the past by Isaac Newton, in the present by Stephen Hawking and, at some point in the future, by Data.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Wow! That is so cool.

That calculator, if I follow, was essentially a tactile version of the LCD/LED displays which are everywhere in our lives.

Of course the Lucasion Chair, Earth Nation division, is held by Avatar's Toph (or at least built by her).

[kestrell]

Thanks for the reference to LCDs--it helps me to visualize the board better. Also, I think I need to get a Toph t-shirt or something else that allows me to represent cool blind characters.

[jesse_the_k]

The article you cited had a picture of the string board, but not the calculator. And now I'm on a Googly spree.

This brief history
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Saunderson.html
provides another description of the calculator.

This source is notable for claiming Saunderson's teaching load was 7 to 8 hours/day, as well as naming his children but not the woman who bore them. The early smallpox claimed his eyes, not just his sight. I wonder if there's an unnamed prosthetist who labored with whale ivory, or perhaps the empty sockets contributed to his early death?

And for great detail on tactual math tools:
http://s22318.tsbvi.edu/mathproject/ch6-sec1.asp
a portion of "Project Math," a thorough research endeavor aimed at schooling teachers to produce math-literate blind students. Of particular utility is the Handbook for Spoken Mathematics, updated from Larry Chang's crucial work. Its information is accessible to fully, partially and not-at-all sighted folks on equal footing.

OK, done now.

Did you learn to use an abacus, or were talking calculators readily available, or did you successfully avoid math in total?

[kestrell]

When I was a teenager, I was still passing for sighted, although I couldn't see the board, and had no help or aids at all. My eye doctor, family, and teachers would just say, Oh, you just need to work harder, so I retook every year of high school math during summer school, geometry three times.

When I returned to college as a fully blind person, the math professors told me blind people couldn't do math, and the disabled students serivices office told me blind people couldn't do math, and it took me two semesters of fighting just to get into the classes I needed to graduate. The DSS did it's best to help me fail by not scanning any of my books (Alexx's mother transcribed them for me), messing up my tests (no one who transcribed my tests knew math, so they either fucked up things like notation and where the parentheses went, or they just left out whole parts with a note saying things like, well, you're blind so you can't do linear algebra). Also, the adaptive computer lab was in the basement so the guy who supposedly ran it really just played games in his office all day instead of keeping the computers and braille printer working and the one time I said that this wasn't a fair testing situation, he called me a bitch, among other things.

Basically, the DSS pressured me to "waive" my math and science requirements, but when I asked if this would still allow me to graduate, they wouldn't answer. No reply at all, even in face to face conversations.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm still pissed about this because I know this crap still goes on.

[jesse_the_k]

You have very right to be pissed off — that's just unacceptable and stupid!

I can not imagine learning geometry without using visual or tactile or sculptural models. Yes, the souper mathematicians can ponder n-dimensional space whether sighted or blind, but to cut you off from that bedrock stuff is just. Eeeek! That's the steam coming out of my ears!

(Was your undergrad at MIT? I ask because I spent five years closely working with a totally blind woman who earned her BS in Math at MIT — in 1975 (6?))

[kestrell]

I finally passed geometry by memorizing as much as I could: proofs were a loss, but I got by on knowing every else.

No, I did my undergrad time at UMass Boston, which is where Mass Commission for the Blind sends all their consumers, sad to say, and no one on the MCB pays any attention to the complaints of the blind students because, obviously, blind kids are not reliable, just whiny, right?

You can see why I refer to MIT as my Hogwarts: it was completely opposite from my experiences at UMass Boston. Even the students were nice: guys often opened doors for me and offered to walk me to the bus stop and would give me directions, even if they were in the metric system. Geek guys are so sweet.

[kestrell]

On a more positive ntoe, thanks for the links! I think it is time for me to take a nap now, though.

[jesse_the_k]

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