Today a programme on BBC Radio 4 made brief mention of a scientist named Rumphius whom they referred to as, "the blind shell collector." I'd never heard of him, so I looked him up. Here's what Wikipedia currently offers:
Georg Eberhard Rumphius (originally: Rumpf; baptized c. November 1, 1627–June 15, 1702) was a German-born botanist employed by the Dutch East India Company in what is now eastern Indonesia, and is best known for his work Herbarium Amboinense produced in the face of severe personal tragedies, including the death of his wife and a daughter in an earthquake, going blind from glaucoma, loss of his library and manuscripts in major fire, and losing early copies of his book when the ship carrying it was sunk. In addition to his major contributions to plant systematics, he is also remembered for his skills as an ethnographer and his frequent defense of Ambonese peoples against colonialism.
That's a lot more than the Beeb's brief mention that conjured visions of an old man with sunken eyes fondling a conch.
I wonder about the chronology of Rumphius's life, when his blindness came on, and how he correlated his own personal struggles and tragedies of the with those of the islanders being colonized by the Dutch. I also wonder this stuff about myself and members of my family who are visually impaired and have fought for social justice.
