Isaac de Sequeira Samuda
Isaac de Sequeira Samuda or Isaac de Sequeyra Samuda (born 1681, d. 1729) was a British physician and poet.[1] He was of Portuguese-Jewish descent and was the first member of the Samuda family to settle in Britain.
He was the first
Biography
He was the second son of a Portuguese merchant, Rodrigo de Sequeira, and his wife, Violante Nunes Rosa. He graduated from
In March 1722, Samuda was admitted as a licentiate by the Royal College of Physicians. In February 1723, he translated a Portuguese report of a whale stranded in the Tagus, for the Royal Society, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 27 June 1723, proposed by its secretary, James Jurin, and supported by Sir Hans Sloane. In April 1724, he delivered a paper to the society giving a detailed description by a Lisbon physician of the yellow fever epidemic in Portugal the previous year. He also provided six reports from Lisbon in Latin, by the astronomer João Baptista Carbone, which gave observations of the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter made by Portuguese Jesuits in Paris, Lisbon, Rome and Peking. These were intended to be used to calculate longitudes.[1]
Samuda was known as a poet. In 1720, he contributed two poems in Portuguese to Daniel Lopes Laguna's Espejo fiel de la vida. In 1724, he wrote a poem of 1,274 stanzas in Portuguese
David Nieto (1654–1728) was the rabbi of the
Samuda died unmarried on 20 November 1729, in the parish of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London. He was buried in the Portuguese Jews' "Velho" (Old) Cemetery in Mile End Road, Stepney,[1] where Nieto is also buried.[4]
References
- ^ a b c d e Edgar Samuel, ‘Samuda, Isaac de Sequeira (bap. 1681, d. 1729)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
- ^ a b Carla Costa Vieira, Observing the skies of Lisbon. Isaac de Sequeira Samuda, an estrangeirado in the Royal Society, Notes & Records, 20 June 2014 Volume 68, issue 2. Royal Society. DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2013.0049. Retrieved 10 January 2107
- ^ Isaac de Sequeira Samuda, Sermam funebre pera as exequias dos trinta Dias do insigne, eminente e pio Haham e Doutor R. David Netto, (London, 1728), p. 119. Quote: "Theologo sublime, Sabio fundo, / Medico insigne, Astronomo famoso, / Poeta doce, Pregador facundo, / Logico arguto, Physico engenhoso, / Rhetorico fluente, Author jucundo, / Nas Linguas prompto, Historias noticioso: / Posto que tanto em pouco, aquy se encerra, / Que o muito, e pouco em morte hé pouca terra."
- ^ Mile End Cemeteries: London, on the website of the International Jewish Cemetery Project