Nicholas Saunderson

Nicholas Saunderson
Born20 January 1682
Thurlstone, Yorkshire, England
Died19 April 1739(1739-04-19) (aged 57)
Cambridge, England
NationalityBritish
Alma materPenistone Grammar School
University of Cambridge
SpouseAbigail Dickons
Children2
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society (1718)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge

Nicholas Saunderson FRS (20 January 1682 – 19 April 1739) was a blind[1] English scientist and mathematician. According to one historian of statistics, he may have been the earliest discoverer of Bayes' theorem.[2] He worked as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post also held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Stephen Hawking.

  1. ^ H F Baker, Nicholas Saunderson or Sanderson, in Dictionary of National Biography Vol L (London, 1897), 332-333.
  2. ^ Stephen M. Stigler, Who Discovered Bayes's Theorem?, The American Statistician, Vol. 37, No. 4, Part 1 (November 1983), pp. 290–296; collected in Stephen M. Stigler (1999), Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods, pp. 291–301, Harvard University Press ISBN 978-0-674-83601-3 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-674-00979-0 (pbk).