The 37 year old Daniel Tammet (Daniel Corney by birth) is an autistic savant, diagnosed with Asperger and savant syndrome (a mental disability wherein patients acquire profound and prodigious abilities that is beyond normal). Having epileptic seizures since he was a child, this illness was actually paved his way into becoming one of the world’s most intelligent man and fastest human calculator.
The most intelligent man documentary (Source: godtammet)
From a documentary showed in a British Television entitled Extraordinary People: The Boy With The Incredible Brain, Tammet was asked to compute 37 raised to 4, or 13 divided by 97, and he would answer perfectly in just about a few seconds. His secret? Synesthesia. He could see numbers as shapes and colors and relate all this in his other senses. It was like the numbers and shapes are put together in his mind to create images and numbers that gives the answer. Oh did you know that he recited the circle ratio pi on up to 22,514 decimal places in front of another team of investigators? That was so much numbers that he kept on reciting for five hours.
Source: The Tonight Show
On another test featured in the documentary, Tammet’s memory and understanding skills was challenged by learning the Icelandic language, a very difficult language to learn and speak) in just one week. And it was just an incredible sight when he guested in an Icelandic talk show at the end of the lessons to converse with the hosts (in Icelandic language of course) and make the world see about his abilities. The result was a fluid exchange of sentences as if Tammet was a natural born Icelandic.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Tammet was also able to meet another popular autistic savant in the name of Kim Peek, dubbed as a human library who reads opposing pages with one eye each and stores them in his double photographic memory. In their meeting, Peek told Tammet that one day, he will be just as great as he is.
