India: The Land Of Human Computers?

With a recent warts-and-all Bollywood biopic of Shakuntala Devi, is India the land of “human computers” – i.e. people who can do incredible mathematical feats without the aid of a calculator?

By: Ringo Bones

For much of the 20^th Century, India has become a go-to country for those in the search of people who can do amazing mathematical feats without the aid of a pocket calculator or even a slide rule. From the number theories of Srinivasa Ramanujan to scores of others who can recite the value of pi to several decimal places that necessitate the use of an electronic device much more advanced than a battery-operated electronic pocket calculator, India seems to be the go to place to find them.

Recently, Indian math wizard Shakuntala Devi, often described as a “human computer”, became the subject of a new film that premiers on the online streaming giant Amazon Prime Video on Friday, July 31, 2020. Born in November 4, 1929 in Bengaluru, India, and in her interviews, Shakuntala Devi said she was “doing mathematical calculations from the age of 3 in my head” and that her father, a circus artist, discovered her felicity with numbers while playing cards with her when he discovered that she was beating him not by cheating – but by memorizing the cards.

At the age of 6, Shakuntala Devi first displayed her extraordinary mathematical skills in a public performance in the city of Mysore in Karnataka the southern state where she was born. She taught herself reading and writing and for decades travelled around the world doing impossibly complex mental calculations before audiences in universities and theaters and in radio and television studios.

In 1950, when Shakuntala Devi participated in a BBC television show, her answer to a problem differed from the host’s. That was because, as she pointed out, there was a flaw in the question. She was proved right when experts re-examined the numbers. In 1977 in the American city of Dallas, she beat Univac, one of the fastest supercomputers ever built during that time. And for her 1982 Guinness Book of World Records recognition s the fastest human computer, she multiplied two 13-digit numbers, randomly picked by a computer, in front of an audience of 1,000 at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. It took her 28 seconds, including the time to recite the 26-digit answer. For much of her professional life, she strove to simplify mathematics for students before passing away back in April 21, 2013 in the Bangalore Hospital, Bengaluru, India.