Why is she regarded as Human Computer? Why is Shakuntala Devi special?
Does her brain function more than ours? Let’s have a look.
A. January 24th of 1977, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas: Shakuntala Devi was challenged by a scholarly professor to find the 3rd root of a 201 digit long number! With an astonishing segment, with the stopwatch marking ‘fiftieth second”, she started slowly- 546372891. Oh! That was absolutely correct, beating Univac 1108, the fastest computer of the time by 10 second.
B. On June 18, 1980 she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds. Her correct answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. This event is mentioned on page 26 of the 1995 Guinness Book of Records.
We wonder how she can be so fast. But, the fact is that this speed and accuracy is not the result of a short time effort. From very early stage of life, Shakuntala Devi had been busy with the quest of mathematics. She used to do card tricks with her father when she was only three. Shakuntala Devi received her early lessons in mathematics from her grandfather. By the age of 5, Shakuntala Devi had become an expert in complex mental arithmetic and was recognized as a child prodigy. A year later, she demonstrated her talents to a large assembly of students and professors at the University of Mysore. And when she was 8 years old, she demonstrated her talents at Annamalai University. After that unbelievable world record she continued her work on the magical field of mathematics. She shares some of the methods of mental calculations in her world famous books such as The Joy of Numbers, Puzzles to Puzzle You, More Puzzles to Puzzle You, The Book of Numbers, Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child, Astrology for you, Perfect Murder, In the Wonderland of Numbers, and various other topics in world mathematics journals. Her book, In the Wonderland of Numbers, talks
about a girl Neha and her fascination for numbers, which can be stated as a demonstration of her early life.
Although some sources claim that she was a ‘mathematician’, she wasn’t a mathematician in the real sense, as mathematical research is an entirely different activity from mental calculation.
This eminent world figure passed away on last April 21, 2013 leaving a big vacancy in Indian mathematics. We, on behalf of Math Lovers pay tribute to her holy soul.
