The Indian Human Calculator

This Blog Let's You Know About Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi

 
She was an Indian writer and mental calculator, popularly known as the "human computer". A child prodigy, her talent earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records.
As a writer, Devi wrote a number of books, including novels as well as texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology. She wrote the book, "The World of Homosexuals", which is considered the first study of homosexuality in India. She treated homosexuality in an understanding light and is considered a pioneer in the field.

 

Shakuntala Devi was born in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India,  to an orthodox Kannada Brahmin family. Her father rebelled against becoming a temple priest and instead joined a circus where he worked as a trapeze artist, lion tamer, tightrope walker and magician. He discovered his daughter's ability to memorise numbers while teaching her a card trick when she was about three years old. Her father left the circus and took her on road shows that displayed her ability at calculation. She did this without any formal education. At the age of six, she demonstrated her arithmetic abilities at the University of Mysore.
In 1944, Devi moved to London with her father.


Mental calculation

Devi travelled the world demonstrating her arithmetic talents, including a tour of Europe in 1950 and a performance in New York City in 1976. In 1988, she travelled to the US to have her abilities studied by Arthur Jensen, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen tested her performance of several tasks, including the calculation of large numbers. Examples of the problems presented to Devi included calculating the cube root of 61,629,875 and the seventh root of 170,859,375. Jensen reported that Devi provided the solution to the above mentioned problems (395 and 15, respectively) before Jensen could copy them down in his notebook. Jensen published his findings in the academic journal Intelligence in 1990.
In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds. Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.

 
On 18 June 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers—7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779—picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds. This event was recorded in the 1982 Guinness Book of Records. Writer Steven Smith said, "the result is so far superior to anything previously reported that it can only be described as unbelievable".

Shakuntala Devi strove to simplify maths for students



The ‘human computer’, ‘mental calculator’, math whiz Shakuntala Devi passed away here early on Sunday aged 80.
  • Ms. Devi, who was suffering from respiratory problems and later developed heart and kidney complications, had been in a Bangalore hospital for two weeks.
  • Ms. Devi held a Guinness World Record for her lightning-speed calculations. Among her distinctions was her ability to, given a date in the last century, mentally ascertain the day.
  • In 1977, she calculated the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in just 50 seconds. In 1980, she multiplied two 13-digit numbers given to her randomly by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London.


“It is sad that her techniques to simplify math were not used by educational institutions,” said D.C. Shivdev, a trustee of the Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust.
“She strove to simplify math for students and help them get over their math phobia. It is a pity that her techniques died with her.”
She authored several books including Fun with Numbers, Puzzles to Puzzle You, and Awaken the Genius in Your Child.

Child prodigy

An indisputable child prodigy, Ms. Devi began to give public demonstrations of her math skills at the age of just six. But it was even earlier, when she was three, that her father — a trapeze artist and lion tamer — first discovered her genius.
Her father, who had rebelled against his orthodox Brahmin family’s wish that he join a circus rather than become a temple priest, noticed his daughter’s uncanny ability to memorise while teaching her a card trick.
Impressed by her gift, he then travelled with Ms. Devi on road shows where she performed her mathematical feats. Ms. Devi, who had no formal education, had once described her ability as a ‘gift’.

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