Mathematical genius Shakuntala Devi, nicknamed the Human Computer

Mathematical genius Shakuntala Devi, nicknamed the “human computer” for her ability to make complex mental calculations, died at a hospital here on Sunday following respiratory problems. She was 83.

“She passed away at Bangalore Hospital,” Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust Trustee D.C. Shivadev told PTI. Doctors declared her dead at 8.15 am, he said.

Ms. Devi was hospitalised a couple of weeks ago for critical respiratory problems, Mr. Shivadev said. “She developed heart and kidney problems later,” he added.

Entries in the Guinness Book

She found a slot in the Guiness Book of World Record for her outstanding ability and wrote numerous books like Fun with Numbers ,Astrology for You , Puzzles to Puzzle You , and Mathablit. She had the ability to tell the day of the week of any given date in the last century in a jiffy.

Child prodigy

Ms. Shakuntala Devi’s father was a circus performer who did trapeze, tightrope and cannonball shows.

It was while she was playing cards with her father at the tender age of three that he found his daughter’s calculation abilities. It turned out that she beat him by memorising the cards.

At the age of six, she demonstrated her calculation skills in her first major public performance at the University of Mysore.

Beating computers

In 1977, Devi extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally. In the same year in Dallas, she competed with a computer to see who gives the cube root of 188138517 faster and she won.

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. She answered the question in 28 seconds flat.

This event is mentioned in the 1995 Guinness Book of Records.

Devi was also an astrologer and gave remedies purportedly based on date and time of birth.

“Mathematics is life”

“Why do children dread mathematics?”, she was once asked.

“Because of the wrong approach. Because it is looked at as a subject,” pat came her reply.

“Mathematics is life, you have math in everything, right from time to your date of birth to the food you eat and the air you breathe,” she states. The right age to train children in mathematics is six, says Shakuntala, who sparkled at three.