Shakuntala Devi

Not to be confused with Sakuntla Devi.

This article is about the writer. For the mythological character, see Shakuntala.

Shakuntala Devi
File:Shakuntala Devi.jpg
Born	(1929-11-04)4 November 1929 Bengaluru, India
Died	Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Nationality	Indian
Other names	Human computer
Occupation	Social worker

Shakuntala Devi (4 November 1929 – 21 April 2013) was an Indian writer and mental calculator, popularly known as the "human computer". A child prodigy, her talents eventually earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records.

As a writer, Devi wrote a number of books, including novels as well as texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology. She also wrote what is considered the first study of homosexuality in India; it treated homosexuality in an understanding light and is considered pioneering.

Life and career

Early life

Shakuntala Devi was born in Bengaluru, India, to an orthodox Kannada Brahmin family. Her father rebelled against becoming a temple priest and instead joined a circus where he worked as a trapeze artist, lion tamer, tightrope walker and magician. He discovered his daughter's ability to memorise numbers while teaching her a card trick when she was about three years old. Her father left the circus and took her on road shows that displayed her ability at calculation. She did this without any formal education. By the age of six she demonstrated her calculation and memorisation abilities at the University of Mysore.

In 1944, Devi moved to London with her father.

Mental calculation

Devi travelled the world demonstrating her arithmetic talents, including a tour of Europe in 1950 and a performance in New York City in 1976. In 1988, she travelled to the US to have her abilities studied by Arthur Jensen, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen tested her performance of several tasks, including the calculation of large numbers. Examples of the problems presented to Devi included calculating the cube root of 61,629,875 and the seventh root of 170,859,375. Jensen reported that Devi provided the solution to the aforementioned problems (395 and 15, respectively) before Jensen could copy them down in his notebook. Jensen published his findings in the academic journal Intelligence in 1990.

In 1977, at 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 US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.

On 18 June 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers—7,686,369,774,870 × 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. Writer Steven Smith states that the result is "so far superior to anything previously reported that it can only be described as unbelievable".

Book on homosexuality

In 1977, she wrote The World of Homosexuals, the first study of homosexuality in India. In the documentary For Straights Only, she says that her interest in the topic came out of her marriage to a homosexual man and subsequent desire to look at homosexuality more closely to understand it.

The book, considered "pioneering", features interviews with two young Indian homosexual men, a male couple in Canada seeking legal marriage, a temple priest who explains his views on homosexuality, and a review of the existing literature on homosexuality. It ends with a call for decriminalising homosexuality, and "full and complete acceptance—not tolerance and not sympathy". The book, however, went mostly unnoticed at the time.

Personal life

She returned to India in the mid-1960s and married Paritosh Banerji, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service from Kolkata. They were divorced in 1979. In 1980, she contested in the Lok Sabha elections as an independent, from Bombay South and from Medak in Andhra Pradesh. In Medak she stood against Indira Gandhi, saying she wanted to "defend the people of Medak from being fooled by Mrs. Gandhi"; she stood ninth, with 6514 votes (1.47% of the votes). Devi returned to Bengaluru in the early 1980s.

In addition to her work as a mental calculator, Devi was an astrologer and an author of several books, including cookbooks and novels.

Death and legacy

In April 2013, Devi was admitted to a hospital in Bengaluru with respiratory problems. Over the following two weeks she suffered from complications of the heart and kidneys. She died in the hospital on 21 April 2013. She was 83 years old then. She is survived by her daughter, Anupama Banerji.

On 4 November 2013, Devi was honoured with a Google Doodle for what would have been her 84th birthday (http://www.google.com/doodles/shakuntala-devis-84th-birthday).

Works

Some of her books include:

• Astrology for You (New Delhi: Orient, 2005). ISBN 978-81-222-0067-6
• Book of Numbers (New Delhi: Orient, 2006). ISBN 978-81-222-0006-5
• 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
• Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child (New Delhi: Orient, 2005). ISBN 978-81-222-0316-5
• More Puzzles to Puzzle You (New Delhi: Orient, 2006). ISBN 978-81-222-0048-5
• Perfect Murder (New Delhi: Orient, 1976), OCLC 3432320
• Puzzles to Puzzle You (New Delhi: Orient, 2005). ISBN 978-81-222-0014-0
• 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
• The World of Homosexuals (Vikas Publishing House, 1977), ISBN 978-0706904789

See also

• Mnemonist

External links

• Chips no match to grey cells: Shakuntala Devi Times of India
• Interview with Know Your Star