One person who had been widely regarded as the human calculator, the one who stunned the world with her split second answering ability to mathematical questions, involving gigantic numbers was none other than Shakuntala Devi. It is said that there were no umm's and no urr's while she answered and certainly no errors.
Shakuntala Devi was born in Bangalore to a Brahmin family in 1929, where her father used to work in circus as a gymnast. She went to school uptil Class III after which her parents could not afford the school fees. It is said that by the age of 3, she was solving University Level Mathematics book. Age 6 - she held a Masters degree in Mathematics from University of Mysore. Age 8 - she had completed her Doctorate in Maths from Annamalai University.
Some famous happenings that took her to fame was when she was asked to derive 23rd root of a 201 digit number at Harvard University. She took 50 seconds to answer while for the same calculation, UNIVAC 1108 computer took 1 minute i.e. 10 seconds longer.
On June 18, 1980, Computer Department of University of Oxford asked her randomly to multiply 2 13-digit numbers. (7686369774870 X 2465099745779). She answered in 2 seconds flat , which was correct and the answer was : 18947668177995426462773730. This event was however mentioned in the 1995 Guiness Book of Records.
She believed that hers was a God's gift and hence she had opened an institute in Bangalore which teaches Vedic Mathematics which according to her had the correct ways of learning and loving the numbers. She has authored several maths and cookery books too and was a noted astrologist and numerologist.
