During the course of the eighteenth century two savants of Anglo-Saxon parentage reached something close to renown in the River Plate area, which then comprised what is actually Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay. These men were Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin.
The British mathematician and philosopher was held in high esteem between the years 1730 and 1780. His popularity was due, in part at least, to the Jesuit professor of mathematics in Córdoba, who had formerly been Newton’s favorite student: the physician Thomas Falkner.