Thomas Fuller, the African maths genius also known as “Negro Tom” and the “Virginia Calculator,” was an enslaved African born in today’s Benin in 1710 and died in 1790 USA, renowned for his mathematical abilities. Also known as a mental calculator.

Shipped to America as a slave in 1724, he had remarkable powers of calculation. Late in his life, he was discovered by antislavery campaigners who used him as a demonstration that blacks were superior, not inferior, to whites in academics.

In this report, Rush stressed the credibility of Hartshorne and Coates. Rush retold how Hartshorne and Coates tested Fuller’s mathematical abilities as follows:

First. Upon being asked how many seconds there are in a year and a half, he answered in about two minutes, 47,304,000.

Second. On being asked how many seconds a man has lived, who is seventy years, seventeen days, and twelve hours old, he answered, in a minute and a half, 2,210,500,800.

Third. The following question was then proposed to him: suppose a farmer has six sows, and each sow has six female pigs the first year, and they all increase in the same proportion to the end of eight years, how many sows will the farmer then have? In ten minutes, he answered, 34,588,806. The difference in time between his answering this and the two former questions was occasioned by a trifling mistake he made from a misapprehension of the question.

No one could challenge his abilities in mathematics.