Shakuntala Devi facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Shakuntala Devi
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|---|---|
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| Born | 4 November 1929 |
| Died | 21 April 2013 (aged 83) |
| Other names | Human Computer |
| Occupation |
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| Spouse(s) |
Paritosh Bannerji
(m. 1964; div. 1979) |
| Children | 1 |
Shakuntala Devi (born November 4, 1929 – died April 21, 2013) was an amazing Indian woman. She was known as the "Human Computer" because she could do math problems in her head incredibly fast. Her special talent earned her a spot in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records. She got the official certificate for her record in 2020, even though she set it back in 1980. Shakuntala was a very smart child and showed her math skills at the University of Mysore without ever going to a formal school.
Shakuntala Devi wanted to make numbers easier for students to understand. Later in her life, she wrote many books. These included novels, math books, puzzle books, and even books about astrology. She also wrote a special book called The World of Homosexuals. This book was one of the first studies about homosexuality in India. She saw people who loved differently in a positive way and was a pioneer in this field.
Contents
Early Life and Discovering a Gift
Shakuntala Devi was born on November 4, 1929, in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Her father, C V Sundararaja Rao, worked in a circus. He was a trapeze artist, lion tamer, tightrope walker, and magician.
He found out about Shakuntala's amazing memory for numbers when she was about three years old. He was teaching her a card trick. Her father then left the circus. He started taking Shakuntala on road shows to display her incredible math abilities. She did all this without any formal schooling. When she was six, she showed her math skills at the University of Mysore.
In 1944, Shakuntala Devi moved to London, United Kingdom.
Amazing Mental Math Skills
Shakuntala Devi traveled all over the world. She showed off her incredible math talents in many countries. She toured Europe in 1950 and visited New York City in 1976.
In 1988, she went to the US. There, a professor named Arthur Jensen from the University of California, Berkeley studied her abilities. Jensen tested her on many difficult math problems. These included finding the cube root of a very large number (61,629,875). She also found the seventh root of another big number (170,859,375). Shakuntala Devi gave the answers (395 and 15) so quickly that Jensen couldn't even write them down! Jensen later shared his findings in a science journal in 1990.
In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she found the 23rd root of a 201-digit number. She did it in just 50 seconds! Her answer was 546,372,891. A special computer at the US Bureau of Standards had to be programmed to check her answer. The computer took even longer than she did to solve the problem!
World Record for Calculation
On June 18, 1980, Shakuntala Devi showed her most famous skill. She multiplied two 13-digit numbers together. The numbers were 7,686,369,774,870 and 2,465,099,745,779. These numbers were chosen randomly at Imperial College London.
She gave the correct answer: 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. She did this in only 28 seconds! This amazing event was recorded in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records. A writer named Steven Smith said her result was "unbelievable" because it was so much better than anything seen before.
Shakuntala Devi later explained some of her methods. She wrote about how she did mental calculations in her 1977 book, Figuring: The Joy of Numbers.
Advocating for Acceptance
In 1977, Shakuntala Devi wrote The World of Homosexuals. This was the first book in India to study different kinds of love. She was interested in this topic because her husband was a homosexual man. She wanted to understand it better.
Her book was considered "pioneering" or groundbreaking. It included interviews with people and looked at what was already written about the topic. The book ended by asking for people who love differently to be fully accepted. It asked for them to be treated with understanding, not just tolerance. Even though it was an important book, it didn't get much attention at the time.
Personal Life and Other Interests
Shakuntala Devi came back to India in the mid-1960s. She married Paritosh Banerji, who worked for the government. They later divorced in 1979.
Besides her math skills, Shakuntala Devi was also a well-known astrologer. She wrote several books, including cookbooks and novels. She enjoyed writing short stories and mystery novels. She also had a strong interest in music.
Later Years and Legacy
In April 2013, Shakuntala Devi became very sick. She was taken to a hospital in Bangalore with breathing problems. Over the next two weeks, she had heart and kidney issues. She passed away in the hospital on April 21, 2013. She was 83 years old.
On November 4, 2013, Google honored Shakuntala Devi with a special drawing on their homepage. This was on what would have been her 84th birthday.
A movie about her life was announced in May 2019. It is called Shakuntala Devi. The movie stars Vidya Balan as Shakuntala Devi. It was released online on Amazon Prime Video on July 31, 2020.
Selected Books by Shakuntala Devi
- Astrology for You (2005)
- Book of Numbers (2006)
- Figuring: The Joy of Numbers (1977)
- In the Wonderland of Numbers (2006)
- Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child (2005)
- More Puzzles to Puzzle You (2006)
- Perfect Murder (1976)
- Puzzles to Puzzle You (2005)
- Super Memory: It Can Be Yours (2011)
- The World of Homosexuals (1977)
See also
In Spanish: Shakuntala Devi para niños
