Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi
Born	(1929-11-04)November 4, 1929 Bangalore, British India
Died	April 21, 2013(2013-04-21) (aged 83) Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Cause of death	Respiratory and cardiac problems
Nationality	Indian
Other names	Human computer

Shakuntala Devi (November 4, 1929 – April 21, 2013), popularly known as "Human Computer", was an Indian prodigy mental calculator.

Biography

Shakuntala Devi was born in Bangalore, India, to an orthodox priestly family. Her father rebelled against becoming a temple priest and instead joined a circus, where he worked as a trapeze and tightrope performer, and later as a lion tamer and a human cannonball.^{[citation needed]} Shakuntala Devi was only around three years old and she was roped in to help her father with card tricks. Her father left the circus and took her on road shows that displayed her amazing ability at number crunching. It is worth noting that she was able to do this, despite having had no formal education. By age six she demonstrated her calculation and memorization abilities at the University of Mysore. At the age of eight she had success at Annamalai University by doing the same. In 2006 she released In the Wonderland of Numbers which talks about a girl Neha and her fascination for numbers. She developed the concept of 'mind dynamics'.

Shakuntala Devi returned to India in the mid-1960s and married Paritosh Banerji, a senior IAS officer from Kolkata. The couple had a daughter, Anupama Banerji. Shakuntala Devi returned to Bangalore in early 1980s.

Achievements

• In 1977 in USA she competed with a computer to see who give the cube root of 188138517 faster, she won. At the Southern Methodist University she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number; she answered in 50 seconds. Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the U.S. Bureau of Standards by the Univac 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.
• 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 correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds. This event is mentioned in the 1982 Guinness Book of Records.

Death

On April 21, 2013 at around 8:15 am, Shakuntala Devi died at a hospital in Bangalore, India. She had been admitted to the Bangalore hospital on April 3 as her kidneys had become weak and she also had respiratory problems. She was 83 years old and is survived by a daughter, Anupama Banerji.

Books

Some of her books include:

• Puzzles to Puzzle You (New Delhi: Orient, 2005). ISBN 978-81-222-0014-0
• More Puzzles to Puzzle You (New Delhi: Orient, 2006). ISBN 978-81-222-0048-5
• Book of Numbers (New Delhi: Orient, 2006). ISBN 978-81-222-0006-5
• Perfect Murder (New Delhi: Orient, 1976), OCLC 3432320
• The World of Homosexuals (Vikas Publishing House, 1977), ISBN 978-0706904789
• Figuring: The Joy of Numbers (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), ISBN 978-0-06-011069-7, OCLC 4228589
• In the Wonderland of Numbers (New Delhi: Orient, 2006). ISBN 978-81-222-0399-8
• Super Memory: It Can Be Yours (New Delhi: Orient, 2011). ISBN 978-81-222-0507-7; (Sydney: New Holland, 2012). ISBN 978-1-74257-240-6, OCLC 781171515
• Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child (New Delhi: Orient, 2005). ISBN 978-81-222-0316-5
• Astrology for You (New Delhi: Orient, 2005). ISBN 978-81-222-0067-6

External links

• Chips no match to grey cells: Shakuntala Devi Times of India
• Chips no match to grey cells: Shakuntala Devi Times of India
• ಶಾಲೆ ಮೆಟ್ಟಲು ಹತ್ತದ ಬಾಲಕಿ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ಗೇ ಸವಾಲೆಸೆದಳು, Vijayakarnataka, April 22, 2013
• ಮಾನವ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್ ಇನ್ನಿಲ್ಲ Prajavani, April 22, 2013

Interview

• Interview with Know Your Star