TODAY’S BIRTHDAY: PETER MARK ROGET (1779)

Peter Mark Roget (1779)

If you have ever used a thesaurus, you have Roget to thank. He was an English physician who created not only the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases—a comprehensive classification of synonyms that he published in 1852 during his retirement—but also a slide rule for calculating the roots and powers of numbers. Roget was an obsessive list-maker, and it has been speculated that he worked on the thesaurus to combat depressive tendencies. What institution did Roget help to establish? More… Discuss

 

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