BANGALORE, Karnataka: Legendary mathematics wizard Shakuntala Devi, dubbed as the world’s fastest human computer who made complex mental calculations as a child prodigy, died at a hospital here Sunday following respiratory problems.
Devi, who has enthralled fans with her prowess for decades, was 83.
“She passed away at Bangalore Hospital and doctors declared her dead at 8.15am (local time),” Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust Trustee D C Shivadev told Press Trust of India. Devi was hospitalised a couple of weeks ago for critical respiratory problems and developed heart and kidney problems later. A household name in India, Devi extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally in 1977.
On June 18, 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers, 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779, picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London and gave the answer in 28 seconds. Devi, who had no formal education, had the ingenous ability to tell the day of the week of any given date in the last century in a jiffy.
“God’s gift. A divine quality,” is how Devi had once said of her unique distinction that began showing visibility since the age of three. She has been quoted as saying that none in her family had shown any signs of the same head for figures.
Rated as one in 58 million for her stupendous mathematical feats by one of the fastest super-computers ever invented – the Univac-1108 –, Devi believed in using grey cells to silicon chips.
Born on Nov 4, 1939, Devi was featured in the Guiness Book of World Record for her outstanding ability and wrote numerous books such as ‘Fun with Numbers’, ‘Astrology for You’, ‘Puzzles to Puzzle You’, and ‘Mathablit’.
Coming from a humble family, Devi’s father was a circus performer who did trapeze, tightrope and cannonball shows. It was while she was playing cards with her father as a young child that he found his daughter’s calculation abilities. It turned out that she beat him not by sleight of hand, but by memorising the cards.
At the age of six, Devi demonstrated her calculation skills in her first major public performance at the University of Mysore in the southern state of Karnataka and two years later, she again proved herself successful as a child prodigy at Annamalai University.
However, despite apprehensions in some quarters, Devi did not lose her calculating ability after turning into an adult like other prodigies such as Truman Henry Safford. — Bernama