Beyond Sight: how blind mathematician model the world

This seminar explores the ability of people with low or no sight to model various aspects of our world through mathematics. From historical figures such as Nicholas Saunderson (1682-1739), the earliest known blind scientist, Lucasian professor at the University of Cambridge and, amongst many other achievements, inventor of the first device to execute mathematical computations with the sense of touch, and Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), one of the greatest and most versatile scientists of all times, who suffered of sight loss from the age of 27, to mypersonal experience as a blind mathematician involved in the Combinatorial Optimization modeling of scheduling and timetabling problems, this talk will show that, provided the right context, people with low or no sight can actively contribute to scientific knowledge thanks to their unique point of view.