Leonhard Euler lost the sight in one eye at twenty-eight and went completely blind at fifty-nine. His mathematical output after going blind actually increased. He dictated papers to assistants, performed calculations entirely in his head, and produced more mathematics in his final decade than most mathematicians produce in a lifetime. He is the most prolific mathematician in history, and roughly half his total output was produced without the ability to see.

This episode traces Euler from his Basel childhood through the St. Petersburg and Berlin academies, the staggering range of his contributions, and the blindness that somehow could not slow him down.

• Euler’s early training under Johann Bernoulli and his move to the St. Petersburg Academy
• The scope of his work — from number theory to mechanics to graph theory to optics
• The loss of sight and the astonishing productivity that continued and accelerated after blindness
• Euler’s legacy as the most prolific mathematician ever and the notation he introduced that we still use