Upon being asked, how many seconds there are in a year and a half, he answered in about two minutes, 47,304,000. Rush retold how Hartshorne and Coates tested Fuller's mathematical abilities as follows: įirst. In this report, Rush stressed the credibility of Hartshorne and Coates. Through his membership in PAS, Rush was acquainted with Hartshorne and Coates and reported on their interview of Fuller in the Columbian Magazine. Benjamin Rush, physician and Founding Father, had sought proof of Black intelligence, through the lens of " scientific achievement", to bolster antislavery causes. The pair stopped their travels to investigate Fuller. When Fuller was about 70 years old, William Hartshorne and Samuel Coates, members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), heard about Fuller's "extraordinary powers in arithmetic". Stories of his mathematical achievements spread through the Eastern Seaboard and reached as far as France and Germany, becoming fuel for the abolitionist movement. Before colonialism, the Bassari used to have "specialists who were trained in the memorization of sums". Ethnomathematics researcher Ron Eglash theorizes that Fuller could've been Bassari, comparing his abilities to their mathematical traditions. Despite his mathematical skill, Fuller was illiterate. He became the legal property of Elizabeth Cox of Alexandria, Virginia. History īorn in Africa, likely somewhere between present-day Liberia and Benin, Fuller was enslaved and shipped to America 1724 at the age of 14. Thomas Fuller (1710 – December 1790), also known as " Negro Tom" and the " Virginia Calculator", was an enslaved African renowned for his mathematical abilities. Enslaved African-American man who was found to have superior mathematical skills.
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