Google, on Monday, celebrated mathematics wizard Shakuntala
Devi's 84th birthday with a doodle. |
| Shakuntala Devi-The Human Computer |
She is dubbed as the world's fastest 'human computer' who
made complex mental calculations.
Born on November 4, 1929, in Bangalore, to an orthodox
priestly Brahmin family Devi had no access to proper schooling and food in her
early years.
When she was only three, Devi began showing great affinity
with numbers. By the time she was five, she became an expert in solving complex
mental arithmetic.
Credited with solving some frightfully complicated
arithmetic problems with apparent ease and astonishing speed, Shakuntala Devi's
calculating skills stunned the world throughout the 1970s and 80s. Her sharpness
often made sophisticated digital devices seem inadequate.
Shakuntala Devi figured 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'.
At the age of six, she demonstrated her calculation skills
in her first major public performance at the University of Mysore and two years
later, she again proved herself successful as a child prodigy at Annamalai
University.
In 1977, Shakuntala 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.
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.
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.
Shakuntala Devi died at Bangalore Hospital at 8:15am on
April 21, 2013 at the age of 83. She was admitted to the hospital with
respiratory difficulty, following which she acquired heart problems and endured
a heart attack which proved fatal.
Today Google pays tribute to the mathematics wizard with a
doodle.TNN | Nov 4, 2013,
No comments:
Post a Comment