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Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi , who has died aged 83, lacked any formal education but possessed suchan extraordinary ability to complete the most complex mathematical calculations indouble quick time that she became known as the human computer.

Shakuntala Devi Photo: CORBIS

6:37PM BST 22 Apr 2013

As Indias most remarkable mathematical prodigy, she had astounded friends and family with her

numerical prowess since childhood. She once calculated the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in her

head in less than a minute, and in June 1980, at Imperial College, London, accurately multiplied

two random 13-digit numbers in a few seconds.

The sum, picked at random by the computer department, was 7,686,369,774,870 x

2,465,099,745,779. After 28 seconds she correctly answered

18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730, a feat that earned her a place in the Guinness Book of

Records.

Her ability to solve complicated arithmetical problems with apparent ease and astonishing speedhad stunned observers since the 1970s, when her unexplained brain power made even sophisticated

digital devices of the day seem inadequate by comparison. Witty and sharp-minded, she possessed

exceptional powers of retention and appeared to harness the power of several mnemonic devices in

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her brain.

In 1988 she visited the United States, where the educational psychologist Professor Arthur Jensen

tried to unlock the secret of her abilities. At Stanford University he monitored her performance in

several mathematical tasks involving large numbers and subjected her to a series of tests.

When volunteers wrote problems on a blackboard, Shakuntala Devi would turn around, stare at the

problem and come up with the right answer, always in less than a minute. According to Jensen, in a

research study published in the journal Intelligence in 1990: Devi solved most of the problems

faster than I was able to copy them in my notebook.

Jensen set her two problems, the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375.

Shakuntala Devi gave the correct answers 395 and 15 even before Jensens wife could start

the stopwatch.

The study explored whether Shakuntala Devis feats derived from some innate ability to manipulate

large numbers or from practice. Her reaction times on simple cognitive tasks such as picking the

odd man out were unexceptional, and contrasted sharply with her speed at arithmetical calculations.

Jensen suggested that she perceived large numbers differently from others. For a calculating

prodigy like Devi, the manipulation of numbers is apparently like a native language, whereas for

most of us, arithmetic calculation is at best like the foreign language we learnt at school, hewrote. He believed that some motivational factor that drives and sustains enormous and

prolonged interest and practice might explain her extreme levels of skill.

Shakuntala Devi was born on November 4 1929 in Bangalore into an orthodox Brahmin family. Her

father, refusing to follow the family priestly tradition, became a circus performer, excelling in

trapeze, tightrope, lion taming and human cannonball acts.

When she was three, Shakuntala began exhibiting precocious skill with numbers, and by the timeshe was five, could calculate cube roots. A year later she amazed mathematicians at Mysore

University with her ability to solve complex mathematical problems in her head. But she had no

conventional schooling, mainly on account of her fathers travels with the circus, and even went

short of food.

She claimed to have joined a convent at the age of 10, but to have been expelled within three

months because her parents were unable to pay the fees.

While growing up in a run-down area of Bangalore, Shakuntala was able to retain large numbers of

digits in her memory. This singular talent came to wider attention when she beat one of the worlds

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fastest computers by 10 seconds in a complicated calculation.

Numbers have life, theyre not just symbols on paper, she once said. I cannot transfer my

abilities to anyone, but I can think of quicker ways with which to help people develop numerical

aptitude.

A daughter survives her.

Shakuntala Devi, born November 4 1929, died April 20 2013

Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013