He Just Doesn't See Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Elements of Algebra

Nicholas Saunderson (January 20, 1682 to April 19, 1739) contracted smallpox as a baby and lost not only his sight, but his eyes as well. Gifted with a phenomenal intellect, curiosity, and drive, as well as loving, encouraging and endlessly helpful family and friends, the young Saunderson excelled at school, including the then usual subjects of Latin and Greek. He was also a talented musician. But, his greatest love was mathematics.

At the age of eighteen, Saunderson met the mathematician William West, with whose help he studied advanced mathematics. By 1707, his proficiency was so great that his friends encouraged him to enter Cambridge University. But, although a friend, Joshua Dunn who lived in Christ's College, brought Saunderson to the College to share his rooms, he lacked the funds to be formally admitted to the College or the University.

At that time, The Lucasian professor of mathematics was William Whiston, who had been appointed to succeed Sir Isaac Newton in 1703. Saunderson told him that he was hoping to become a teacher of mathematics. Whiston was so impressed by the young man's abilities that, rather than assisting him to enroll as a student, he helped him gain a position as a lecturer. Soon, Saunderson was lecturing to large classes in subjects as diverse as Newtonian philosophy, hydrostatics, mechanics, optics, sound and astronomy.

Upon Whiston's removal from the Lucasian chair on October 30 1710, Saunderson was the obvious choice to succeed him. However, having never actually attended any university, he had no degree. So, the heads of the Cambridge Colleges petitioned Queen Anne to award him the degree of Master of Arts. This she duly did on November 19, 1711. On the following day Saunderson was appointed to succeed Whiston becoming the fourth Lucasian professor of mathematics. In 1728, King George II conferred on him the degree of LLD. His great work, "The Elements of Algebra", which he worked on for the last six years of his life, was published posthumously in 1740.

Answer: Biology

Leonhard Euler (April 15, 1707 to September 18, 1783), very possibly the greatest scientist of the Eighteenth Century and one of the most prolific mathematicians of all time, was a Swiss polymath, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology. He made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics as well, such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function.

Also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and music theory, Euler spent much of his working life in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian empire and Berlin, Prussia's capital city.

In 1738, Euler became almost blind in his right eye. Although he himself blamed the cartography he performed for the St. Petersburg Academy for his condition, the cause of this vision loss remains unknown. Euler's vision in that eye continued to worsen through the years and, In 1766, a cataract was discovered in his left eye. Though couching of the cataract temporarily improved his vision, complications ultimately rendered him almost totally blind in the left eye as well. His blindness had no discernible effect on his output however. Indeed, his productivity in many areas of study increased. It is reported that, in 1775, he and his staff produced, on average, one mathematical paper every week. Though an influential teacher and prolific writer of scientific papers, he apparently did not leave a great work analogous to Newton's "Principia" or Saunderson's "Elements of Algebra".

Answer: The study of honeybees

François Huber (July 2, 1750 to December 22, 1831) began losing his sight at the age of fifteen. Yet, his disability had little effect on his life and none on his curiosity and scientific pursuits. With the aid of several assistants, eventually including his son Pierre, he intensively studied the behavior and biology of honeybees. He made or confirmed a remarkable number of discoveries about these insects.

Crucially, he showed that both queens and worker bees can lay eggs. He confirmed the discovery by A.M. Schirach that honeybees are able to convert eggs into queens by the use of royal jelly. He found that the queen bee does not mate in the hive, but rather in the air and that the timing of this event is essential. He described the battles between queens and what happens when the existing queen is replaced by a newly introduced one. He also described the killing of drones at the end of the summer, and proved that bees used their antennae to communicate.

Moreover, Huber studied the dimensions of the cells within the honeycomb and how they influence the way the larvae spin silk to make the cocoons. He looked at the ways swarms formed and was the first to provide an accurate biological history of bee colonies. All this work was facilitated by his development of a new type of hive in which each comb had glass sides, opening like books, with each frame visible to view. This invention - the forerunner of modern observation hives - allowed the observers to observe the bees and follow them around the hive.

Huber's pioneering work, "Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles" ("New observations on bees") appeared in 1792. In 1804, he published more groundbreaking work in "Premier Mémoire sur l'origine de la Cire" ("First memoir on the origin of wax"). The second edition of "Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles", , edited in part by Pierre, was issued in 1814. Further findings on wax were published in this volume. Having discovered that, like other animals, bees' respiration provides them with oxygen, he teamed up with botanist Jean Senebier to produce "Mémoires sur l'Influence de l'Air et de Diverses Substances Gazeuses dans la Germination de Différentes Graines" ("Memoirs on the Influence of Air and of Various Gaseous Substances on the Germination of Different Seeds") in which they demonstrated the need for oxygen in germination.

Answer: The Paris Observatory

Dominique François Jean Arago (February 26, 1786 to October 2, 1853) was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, supporter of the Carbonari revolutionaries and politician. The first of his many and varied accomplishments was, with Jean-Baptiste Biot, to complete the meridian arc measurements that had been begun by J.B.J. Delambre. They began their work in 1806. Although Biot returned to Paris after they had determined the latitude of Formentera in Spain, the southernmost point to which they were to carry the survey, Arago continued the work till 1809, since he wanted to measure a meridian arc in order to determine the exact length of a metre. Today, there are one hundred thirty-five Arago medallions set along the Paris Meridian for six miles (9.2 km), in recognition of Arago's work on the meridian and his measurements of the Earth. In addition, his name is one of the 72 inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

Because of his dedication to this mission, Arago found himself caught up in the political and military events of the times, which saw him imprisoned and escaping, embarked on several ill-fated sea voyages and stuck in a lengthy quarantine. At last, though, he made it back to Paris with the records of his survey, which he promptly deposited in the Bureau des Longitudes. In recognition of his service to the cause of science, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences, at the remarkably early age of twenty-three. Later in 1809 he was chosen by the council of the École Polytechnique to succeed Gaspard Monge in the chair of analytical geometry, while also being named by the emperor one of the astronomers of the Paris Observatory, where he lived for the rest of his very eventful life. It was in his capacity as astronomer that he delivered his remarkably successful series of popular lectures in astronomy from 1812 to 1845.

Arago's interests included longitude, the pressure of steam at different temperatures, the velocity of sound, and magnetism. His studies in this latter field were completed and explained by Michael Faraday. He took an interest in optics, helping to confirm Augustin-Jean Fresnel's wave theory of light. Although he originated the general idea of how to measure the velocity of light, his failing eyesight meant that the execution of the experiment fell to Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault. Arago also proved the long-suspected connection between the aurora borealis and the variations of Earth's magnetic field. He was appointed director of the Paris Observatory in 1830. After the great man's death, his writings were collected and published in both French and English.

Answer: Cardiopulmonary

Born to a poor immigrant family in the U.S. city of Chicago, Jacob W. Bolotin (January 3, 1888 to April 1, 1924) was congenitally blind. Upon graduation from the Illinois School for the Blind, the young Jacob did the sort of work that was deemed appropriate for the blind, that of selling household items door to door. Though a successful salesman, he was dissatisfied. He wanted more. He wanted to become a medical doctor.

Eventually, after a mighty struggle against the seemingly insuperable bigotry of his time against disabled individuals in general and the blind in particular, he won admittance into Chicago's Loyola University medical school. When he graduated with honors - the first congenitally blind man to be granted a medical license in the world - Bolotin struggled financially. Soon, however, his extraordinary medical skills, particularly in diagnosing and treating conditions of the heart and lungs, brought him recognition and a thriving private practice. Not content even with this, Bolotin also worked extensively in the poor and segregated areas of Chicago. In time, too, he became a professor at his alma mater.

He also advocated vigorously for Civil Rights, and not only for the blind. He once said:

"I am blind, and I am a doctor. The fact that I am standing here before you is living proof of what we the handicapped can achieve. The sentiment held by the average person that we are helpless, useless objects of charity must be erased forever. The major problem for us is not our affliction, but the wall of ignorance, injustices, indifference and misconceptions that separate us from you who can see. We must break down that wall, but we can't do it alone. We need your help.

"How fortunate we all are to be citizens of this great country. Let us make its bounty, its freedoms and rights we take so for granted, available to every human being, regardless of physical infirmities, rich or poor--equal rights to education, equal rights to work, equal rights to dream and achieve that dream, to achieve lives of self-reliance, pride and usefulness to our fellow man, and to live to the fullest the life God granted him."

Bolotin took a special interest in children and youth. He advocated progressive health programs, adequate play, better parenting, and an equal education for all children. Putting some of these ideas into practice, he started one of the earliest all blind Boy Scout troop. He served as leader of this troop, Troop 300, until his death, after which his brother Fred remained closely associated with it up through the 1950s.

Dr. Jacob Bolotin lived so intensely and worked so hard as a physician, educator, advocate and public speaker - He was a dedicated member of the Kiwanis Club! - that it is hardly surprising that he died at the tragically young age of thirty-six. It is said that one thousand of the five thousand mourners who attended his funeral were blind. In 2008, the U.S. National Federation of the Blind, a Civil Rights organization, established an annual award in Dr. Bolotin's honor. This award, founded by the Doctor's niece and biographer Rosalind Perlman, is given to individuals and organizations who have made substantial contributions toward achieving the goal of the full integration of the blind into society on the basis of equality.

Answer: False

Lev Semyonovich Pontryagin (September 3, 1908 to May 3, 1988) is acknowledged to be one of the greatest mathematicians of the Twentieth Century. He lived his entire life in Moscow, first as a subject of the Russian Empire and then as a citizen of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (an independent state from 1917 to 1922, thereafter a constituent state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR until its dissolution in 1991). Born to an accountant and a dressmaker, Pontryagin lost his eyesight after an explosion when he was fourteen. Though he was an outstanding student, his parents could not afford to send him to an equally good school. Nonetheless, with his mother's unflagging assistance and support, he graduated from secondary school and, in 1925, entered Moscow State University.

It soon became obvious to Pontryagin's professors that he was a remarkable student. Prof. Pavel Alexandrov in particular took an interest in the young, blind mathematician, assisting, guiding and eventually collaborating with him. By 1927, the nineteen-year-old Pontryagin was producing important results on the Alexander duality theorem. This line of research culminated, in 1932, with his proof of the duality between the homology groups of bounded closed sets in Euclidean space and the homology groups in the complement of the space.

Pontryagin graduated from university in 1929 and was appointed to the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of his alma mater. In 1934, he became a member of the Steklov Institute and in 1935 he was appointed head of the Department of Topology and Functional Analysis at the Institute.

Some of his many pioneering contributions to the place where the two domains of mathematics, topology and algebra, come together include: Laying the foundations for the abstract theory of the Fourier transform, now called Pontryagin duality; computing the homology groups of the classical compact Lie groups, which he later called his greatest achievement; with French mathematician René Thom, co-founding cobordism theory and co-discovering the central idea of this theory, that framed cobordism and stable homotopy are equivalent, leading to the introduction of a theory of certain characteristic classes, now called Pontryagin classes, designed to vanish on a manifold that is a boundary; and, solving Hilbert's fifth problem for abelian groups.

In 1942, Pondryagin introduced the cohomology operations now called Pontryagin squares. Beginning in 1952, he worked in optimal control theory, his maximum principle now being fundamental to the modern theory of optimization. He also introduced the idea of a bang-bang principle, to describe situations where the applied control at each moment is either the maximum positive 'steer' or the maximum negative 'steer'.

Pontryagin authored several influential monographs as well as popular textbooks in mathematics, some of which are available in English. He received many honors, including election to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1939 (becoming a full member in 1959), and being among the first recipients of the Stalin prize (later called the State Prize) in 1941. Despite the notoriously closed nature of the USSR, Pondryagin's stature was such that he had relatively free access to the West, at least its mathematical world. In 1970, he was elected Vice President of the International Mathematical Union.

Answer: The sphere

French Mathematician Bernard Morin (March 3, 1931 to March 12, 2018) was born in Shanghai, where his father was a banker. Morin developed glaucoma as a small child. Although he was taken to France for medical treatment, soon after returning to Shanghai, he tore his retinas and was completely blind by the age of six. He then left Shanghai and returned to France permanently, where he was educated, first in schools for the blind till the age of fifteen, and then in a regular lycée. Although he was interested in both mathematics and philosophy his father, thinking math would be too difficult for a blind student, steered the young man toward philosophy.

Morin studied at the École Normale Supérieure but, becoming disillusioned with philosophy, switched to mathematics, studying under Henri Cartan. He spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as a researcher in 1957. By the time he earned his Ph.D. in 1972 in singularity theory, under the direction of René Thom, Morin was already well known for his sphere eversion, a homotopy that starts with a sphere and ends with the same sphere turned inside-out.. He also discovered the Morin surface, a half-way model for the sphere eversion, and used it to prove a lower bound on the number of steps needed to turn a sphere inside out. In 1978, he discovered the first parametrization of Boy's surface. This is an immersion of the real projective plane in three-dimensional space, discovered in 1901 by the German mathematician Werner Boy, working under David Hilbert.

Morin spent most of his career teaching at the Université de Strasbourg. He retired in 1999.

Answer: Geerat Vermeij

Evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Geerat J. Vermeij (b. September 28, 1946) is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California Davis. He lost his eyesight at age three. Born in Sappemeer, the Netherlands, he moved to the United States with his family when he was ten. By that time, he was a proficient braille reader, having attended a Dutch school for the blind. It was also from the age of ten that young Geerat knew he wanted to be a conchologist, and he pursued that interest throughout his school and professional career. His focus of interest is marine molluscs, both as fossils and as living creatures.

Among other research topics, he has studies coevolutionary relationships between predator and prey organisms, focusing on marine mollusks. He has argues that an important evolutionary mechanism is the process of escalation, which occurs when species adapt to, or are limited by their competitors, predators, and parasites.

Prof. Vermeij belongs to numerous professional societies and has over three hundred scientific publications to his name. His first book, "Biogeography and Adaptation" came out in 1978. His other books include "Evolution and Escalation: An Ecological History of Life", "A Natural History of Shells", "Privileged Hands: A Scientific Life", "Nature: An Economic History", which evaluates economics and evolution and "The Evolution of Power". His work has earned him many prestigious awards such as the Paleontological Society Medal and the MacArthur Fellowship.

Answer: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Born July 21, 1949 in El Reno, Oklahoma , died July 17, 2021 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Kent Kullers was the world's first totally blind physicist and, possibly, the first astronomer blind from infancy. Born premature at a time when it was standard practice to immerse preemies in pure oxygen, he was placed in such an incubator. This saved his life but, as all too often happened in such cases, the oxygen overexposure destroyed the baby's retinas, leaving him totally blind.

From an early age, The young Kent enjoyed being read physics books by his physicist father. An avid reader in his own right, especially of Science Fiction, he was a straight-A student, a national merit scholar and valedictorian of his high school class. He studied first psychology and later physics at Pomona College, receiving his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980.

While in college, Cullers read "Project Cyclops", the comprehensive analysis of SETI science and technology issues prepared for NASA by Bernard M. Oliver. The seminal study sparked the young man's passion for what was to become his life's work. In graduate school, he spent a great deal of time at NASA Ames Research Center with researchers engaged in what was then NASA's SETI program. Just as he was finishing graduate school, a serendipitous meeting at a wedding led to Cullers being offered a post doctoral fellowship at Ames.

From 1985 to 1990, cullers was the Targeted Search Signal Detection Team Leader with the SETI Institute. He developed, evaluated, and implemented optimised detection algorithms for continuous and pulsed signals originating from distant Earth-like planets. He created algorithms for both advanced special purpose and general-purpose computers. From 1990 to March 1994, he was the signal detection subsystem manager for the High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) Project at Ames, where he supervised the development of hardware and software for signal detection. From 1993 to March 1994, Cullers led the SETI Research & Technology effort and managed the upgrading and replication of all the digital data processing equipment for HRMS. Although NASA's HRMS Project was cancelled by the United States Congress in October 1993, Cullers remained with Project Phoenix, the SETI Institute's continuation of the Targeted Search portion of HRMS. Resigning from NASA in October 1995, he rejoined the SETI Institute as a senior scientist and project manager for Project Phoenix. He served as Director for SETI R&D from 2000 to 2005, , when he retired from the SETI Institute.

Cullers was also a leader in designing advanced radio telescopes that scan wider and wider swaths of the skies. One of his most successful programs filters out earthly "noise", like waves from cell phones, that clutters SETI's radio reception. His work has led to unexpected advances in other fields as well. For example, his signal detection expertise has helped planet detection teams evaluate data for natural signals from distant solar systems. And, surprisingly, Cullers' algorithms have helped advance technology for breast cancer detection. He was a member of the American Astronomical Society, and a board member for the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Sensory Access Foundation, and the Peninsula Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Cullers was the recipient of many honors and awards, including NASA's Exceptional Engineering Achievement medal in 1993 and Federal Employee of the Year in 1994. Minor planet 35056 Cullers is named in his honor.

Answer: Xerox

American physicist Peter A. Torpey was born in 1953 with glaucoma that worsened throughout his life until, by young adulthood, he was all but completely blind. He could just about manage to read visually through high school and college - he graduated Suma cum Laude with a B.S. in Physics from Union College in Schenectady New York in 1974 - but, around the time he started graduate school at the University of Virginia with the assistance of a Newcomb Fellowship, with his eyesight essentially gone, the young man completely changed the way he studied to adapt to his new reality. Having attended a school for the blind for a few grades in elementary school, he was familiar with braille. Now he adopted it in earnest, as well as taking advantage of the textbook reading service then known as Recordings for the Blind, now Learning Ally, and such adaptive technology as existed at the time. As an avid computer programmer, Torpey remained a lifelong champion of the ever-evolving world of adaptive tech.

Upon graduation with a Ph.D. in engineering physics, Torpey went to work at the Webster Research Center of Xerox Corporation in Rochester, New York. There, over a twenty-five year career, he wrote computer models, worked in image processing (including managing the image-processing group that developed the drivers for Xerox's ink jet printers) and developed an innovative suite of software tools. Using these tools, it was possible to produce hardcopy images that appeared to have been printed on experimental printers, eliminating the need to design and build hardware prototypes to assess print quality, operating failures and manufacturing tolerances. This saved Xerox millions of dollars and allowed the company to present the results to outside focus groups, so that potential customers could evaluate the performance of printers that had not yet been built..

In 1995, Torpey was awarded Xerox's "President's Award" for the development and use of novel printer simulation software and techniques. In 1997 he became Xerox's youngest Research Fellow. Over the years, he was awarded twenty patents for his inventions. At the time of his retirement from Xerox in 2005, he was both a manager and one of twenty research fellows in the entire company.