Richard Porson

Richard Porson (25 December 1759 – 25 September 1808) was an English classical scholar. He was the discoverer of Porson's Law. The Greek typeface Porson was based on his handwriting.

He was born at East Ruston, near North Walsham, in Norfolk, the eldest son of Huggin Person, parish clerk. His mother was the daughter of a shoemaker from the neighbouring village of Bacton. He was sent first to the village school at Bacton, kept by John Woodrow, and afterwards to that of Happisburgh kept by Mr Summers, where his extraordinary powers of memory and aptitude for arithmetic were soon discovered. His literary skill was partly due to the efforts of Summers, who long afterwards stated that during fifty years of scholastic life he had never come across boys so clever as Porson and his two brothers. He was well grounded in Latin by Summers, remaining with him for three years. His father also took pains with his education, making him repeat at night the lessons he had learned in the day. He would frequently repeat without making a mistake a lesson which he had learned one or two years before and had never seen in the interval. For books he had only what his father's cottage supplied—a book or two of arithmetic, John Greenwood's England, Jewell's Apology, and an odd volume of Chambers' Cyclopaedia picked up from a wrecked coaster, and eight or ten volumes of the Universal Magazine.

When Porson was eleven, the curate of East Ruston took charge of his education. Mr Hewitt taught him with his own boys, taking him through Julius Caesar, Terence, Ovid and Virgil; he had already made great progress in mathematics. In addition, Hewitt brought him to the notice of John Norris of Witton Park, who sent him to Cambridge to be examined by James Lambert, the two tutors of Trinity College, Cambridge (Thomas Postlethwaite and Collier), and the mathematician George Atwood, then assistant tutor; the result was so favourable that Norris decided in 1773 to provide for his education. It was impossible to get him into Charterhouse School and he was entered at Eton College in August 1774.

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