Isaac de Sequeira Samuda

Isaac de Sequeira Samuda or Isaac de Sequeyra Samuda (born 1681, d. 1729) was a British physician and poet. He was of Portuguese-Jewish descent and was the first member of the Samuda family to settle in Britain.

He was the first Jew to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (in 1727). In 1728, he gave an oration at the funeral of Haham David Nieto.

Biography He was the second son of a Portuguese merchant, Rodrigo de Sequeira, and his wife, Violante Nunes Rosa. He graduated from Coimbra University as a bachelor of medicine in 1702. With his friend Dr Samuel Nunes and two uncles, he was arrested in 1703, tortured and convicted, under duress, of practising Judaism, at an auto da fé in Lisbon on 19 October 1704, which meant the death penalty if convicted again. His maternal grandfather's widow was burnt at the stake in Lisbon in 1706, as was his only sister Maria de Melo Rosa in 1709. He escaped to London with his mother, an uncle and five aunts, to join his elder half- brother, Abraham de Almeida (Gaspar de Almeida de Sequeira). He joined the London Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in October 1709 and changed his name to Ishac de Sequeira Samuda. In a sermon preached at the Nieto's funeral, and later printed, Samuda said that Nieto was an example to emulate and one that he followed. Samuda supported his arguments by drawing on works of the Holy Scriptures and authors of classical Greece and Rome. He quoted Robert Boyle, Hermann Boerhaave, Willem 's Gravesande and Isaac Newton.