Modern technologies and educational policies aim to make physics fully accessible to the blind. But just how easy is it for the sightless, asks Jon Cartwright
Every age has its great teachers, and in the early 18th century one of them was Nicholas Saunderson (1682–1739). From 1711 till his death, Saunderson was the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the UK – a post held just a few years previously by Isaac Newton, and in recent times by Stephen Hawking. He would lecture to packed halls for at least eight hours a day on subjects ranging from mechanics and hydrostatics, to optics and astronomy. He was said to have a tremendous feel for his subject. Literally, as it turns out: he was blind.
Times were certainly tough 300 years ago for the sightless. Having lost his eyes to smallpox as a baby, Saunderson is said to have taught himself to read by tracing out the letters on gravestones. Yet he was luckier with his situation than most. His father and his friends supplemented his school education by reading to him at length, and in his teens he made a learned acquaintance who brought him up to speed with the latest developments in mathematics. His ultimate accession to Lucasian professor was doubly impressive, for the university’s decision went against the wishes of Newton himself – and there are not many known instances of that.
Is it any easier to be a blind physicist today? Inclusive education policies, leaps in technology and a better awareness of the needs of the disabled all suggest a positive answer, yet blind physicists seem to be few and far between. Perhaps the most famous living example is the US astronomer Kent Cullers, whose involvement in NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme was fictionalized in the 1997 blockbuster Contact. “We’re in a sighted person’s world,” says Aqil Sajjad, a blind theoretical physicist who lives in Boston, US. […]