Math Genius Computes in the Blink of an Eye

here's nick watt with brain man 31 year old daniel tamet is on the outside an unremarkable young man but like clark kent who behind those glasses hides the powers of superman behind tamet's bookish exterior there lies a super human gift one of the most extraordinary brains our planet has ever seen scientists have tested tamet's memory they had him take a look at pi a string of numbers that goes on forever you read through them once yeah and that was it you've memorized it and that was it one time early he memorized the first 22 000 digits of pie four one five nine and then in front of a disbelieving audience he begins reciting the numbers back in order from memory five seven five mathematicians struggling to keep up checking every single digit two five nine zero it's mesmerizing every single one perfect i learned to count like anyone else at a young age and when i did i would see colors i would see pictures in my mind i assumed at the time that everyone saw numbers as i did tamet didn't do math like the teacher said the answers just came to him watch how he finds the answer to 53 times 131 with a sum like 53 round very round archer at the bottom and then you've got another number here 131 which is longer a little bit like an hourglass symmetrical and in the middle you've got a negative space then you have a third shape and this i see it's the solution to the sum six nine four three for tamit every digit is a three-dimensional shape nine is large deep blue concave four is small light blue angular 10 is like a metallic puddle to memorize a long number like pie he just forms a beautiful landscape out of those shapes it's a world it's a novel world a world science cannot fully understand tamet has asperger's syndrome a form of autism that makes him unnaturally obsessive focused he also has something called synesthesia in a normal brain different parts don't talk to each other in tamet's brain they do that's why he sees numbers as beautiful shapes and colors they call tamet an autistic savant like rain man do you know how much the square root of 2130 is 46.15192304 to 304. most savants like dustin hoffman's character find normal live social interaction almost impossible were you bullied at school yes i would have gestures flapping of the hands for example walking in circles and the other children will repeat that back to me to use me call me names but these days crowds flock to hear damn it speed the most extraordinary brain his name is daniel tamet i realized you know that i had something within me that was special and was a gift and i should use it to the best of my ability to to make a difference his autobiography is a bestseller translated into 20 languages a second book details how our brains really work i'm able to look from the inside out and so that gives a new perspective that scientists haven't had before enormous tamet is also a role model for having overcome the crippling limitations of autism it's never easy i mean i think there's always an effort there he trained himself to make friends tell jokes stuff that for most of us is second nature but he still can't drive a car what's the obstacle there the obstacle there is the amount of detail that my brain will pick up and it's beautiful but it's not safe for driving dammit born the eldest of nine children in england now lives in avignon in the south of france where popes lived in the 14th century van gogh painted the surrounding countryside that's meat cheese he's embraced the french juan de vivre we eat lots of fish very good for the brain i'm not sure you need that do you who knows because not only are numbers a gift but so he knows eight languages and we watched him pick up one more off to reykjavik iceland where tamet touches down with a final challenge to learn icelandic perhaps the most impenetrable language on earth for example remember the name of that icelandic volcano that was in the news he'll have just one week to learn the language impossible for for a human to learn this in a week when people say to me this is something you can't do i want to do it i want to prove them wrong he was like a vacuum cleaner i can see he was sucking up the words and he was just putting it in his brain after just seven days of studying has he cracked the code okay tell me when to go on tammett appeared on icelandic tv alive no it's not daniel tamet is super human and science can't quite figure out why so daniel the question everyone wants to ask you is how do you pronounce the name of that icelandic volcano that's hard

Channel: ABC News

Views: 1,290,410

Keywords: ABC, ABCNews, News, Superhumans, Powers, Heroes, 2020, US, abc, abc news, news

Id: Xd1gywPOibg

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2010