Maier is among an estimated 50 people in the world recognized as prodigious savants whose abilities are as remarkable as their limitations. |
Bent double under their loads, the savants spend hours unpacking and repacking their sacks whenever they meet each other. |
The process was begun with the savants who were sent by Napoleon to accumulate information for the multivolume Description de l' Egypte. |
Bent over their computers, thirty savants were absorbed in equations of the ninety-fifth degree. |
Mersenne both kept in touch with savants all over Europe, and seems to have had a clear vision himself of what a new philosophy must consist in. |
It is not enough for a few savants to be privy to esoteric mathematical knowledge for that knowledge to be influential in a wider culture. |