Women's Day 2023: Shakuntala Devi The Human Computer Who Was An Expert In Maths And Mind Dynamics

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Shakuntala Devi was the recipient of the highest Guiness World Record for "Fastest Human Computation." Her correct computation of two 13 digit numbers which took just 28 seconds in 1980, as a feat, was added in her obituary and also entered the Guiness Records.

She also has authored a crime thriller namely "Perfect Murder." Which is a first person account of a lawyer who decides to kill his wife for nefarious reasons. She wrote several books on mathematics including "Puzzles to Puzzle You," "Super Memory: It Can Be Yours" and "Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child." Here are some surprising facts about her which you should know.

1. Shakuntala Devi was born in orthodox Hindu kannada Brahmin family on November 4, 1929 in Bangalore. Her father was a trapeze artist and a lion tamer in a circus and a magician and hence the family was not so well off.

2. Shakuntala Devi proved as a tiny tot that she was not an ordinary child but a mental calculator.As days passed, bringing up Shakuntala, her father one fine day, discovered an unusual ability that his daughter had when she was barely three. She could memorise numbers from the beginning to the end while he was teaching her a card trick. The word soon spread around and her extraordinary ability and her mathematical precision soon became the talk of the town.

3. She did not experience the joys of schooling as she could not afford it beyond the first grade. Her parents could not afford the fee of 2 rupees that was required to retain her at school.

4. Her talents grew day by day phenomenally and they also found recognition by the time she turned out to be six. She was officially tested for her abilities, by the University of Mysore, Annamalai University, and other universities in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam. Devi, at that tender age, had learnt to stretch the limits of her human brain and Mind dynamics, a concept (movement of mind) was developed by Shakuntala Devi sooner. As her fame spread, in 1944, she relocated to London with her father.'

5. She expanded her horizons in several areas like astrology and cookery. She studied homosexuality in detail and wrote a book "The world of homosexuals". This had a tear jerking background or tale behind it. In early 1960 Devi was married off to Paritosh Banerjee, an IAS officer who was a confirmed homosexual. Although she had a daughter by name Anupama Banerjee, she suffered longer than she could bear, and finally separated from her husband after 19 years of unhappy marriage in the year 1979.

This pain made her turn inward and study the cases more thoroughly and finally her book which was launched, was well reviewed and assessed as a unique book in the series of book in that category. She was an advocate for the LGBTQ rights. She wanted LGBTQs to be accepted in society as normal human beings.

6. She travelled the world over to display her talent to those who evinced curiosity in her ability, and those mathematically well-endowed people amongst us who were there just to test her.

7. One cannot somehow believe that she was a mathematical genius whose brain worked many times faster than the brain of an ordinary man. There seemed to be certainly something more than mere calculations and the split seconds that were taken to deduce the answers. Arthur Jensen, a psychology professor was one of those nonbelievers who put her to severe test. He tested her by giving tasks which ranged from problems of low grade difficulty to the highest level. He inferred that Shakuntala Devi was providing solutions to him much before he could write down his questions in his notebook. This certainly gives her case a divine angle and proves that her ability was beyond the human limits.

8. Shakuntala believed that her talent was a gift from God and she was just making his presence felt wherever she went. However, she did not step into USSR and China as she thought they were communists and nonbelievers of God.

9. In 1977 Shakuntala Devi took just 50 seconds to derive the 23rd root of a 201-digit number. The UNIVAC 1101 Computer with a special program took much longer than that to derive an answer.

10. She also projected her talents in the 1950s in the BBC where after she was honored with the title human computer which she intensely disliked as she thought human brain could not be compared to a computer.

11. She was a Lok Sabha elections contestant against Mrs. Indira Gandhi in 1980. She chose Medak in Telengana to compete against Gandhi and stood ninth in the elections as an independent candidate. 15. In 1982 her name appeared in the Guinness Book of World records.

12. Shakuntala Devi did any tough mathematical calculation in just twenty-eight seconds. You give her any random number; she will come up with a perfect solution to this within 28 seconds.

13. She also used many mathematical calculations which she penned down in the book "Figuring-The joy of print'.

14. On 21 April 2013, she was admitted to the hospital with respiratory problems and multiple organ failure and succumbed to it on the same day. She was 83 years of age.

15. Vidya Balan has acted in the role of Shakuntala Devi in the Shakuntala Devi film, where Vidya plays two roles, that of a mother and a professional. This was stalled for a while due to the Covid outbreak for a short while.