ZERAH

COLBURN (1804-1840)  , American mathematical prodigy, was born at Cabot, Vermont, on the 1st of September 1804 . At a very early age he developed remarkable powers of calculating with extreme rapidity, and in 1810 his father began to exhibit him . As a performing prodigy he visited Great Britain and France . From 1816 to 1819 he studied in Westminster school, London . After the death of his father in 1824 he returned to America, and from 1825 to 1834 he was a Methodist preacher . As he grew older his extraordinary calculating powers diminished . From 1835 until his death, on the 2nd of March 1840, he was professor of languages at the Norwich University in Vermont . He published a Memoir of his life in 1833 . His nephew, also named ZERAH'COLBURN (1832-1870), was a well-known mechanical engineer; the editor successively of the Railroad Advocate, in New York, The Engineer, in London, and Engineering, in London; and the author of a work entitled The Locomotive Engine (1851) .