Shakuntala Devi
| Shakuntala Devi | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
4 November 1929 Bengaluru, India |
| Died | 21 April 2013 (aged 83) Bengaluru, Karnataka, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Other names | Human computer |
| Occupation | Social worker |
Shakuntala Devi in (Kannada: ಶಕುಂತಲಾ ದೇವಿ; 4 November 1929 – 21 April 2013) 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.
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.
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