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 20th 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.