The Human Computer

This post is a humble tribute to the human computer Shakuntala Devi, whose biopic starring Vidya Balan, is slated to release in Amazon Prime on July 31.

Early Days

Shakuntala Devi was born in Bangalore on 4th November 1929. At the age of 3 itself, she demonstrated the ability to memorize card tricks based on which she could tell the next move. On noticing this, her father quit his job at the circus company and took her on road shows where she could display her ability at calculations. By the age of 5, she had become an expert at solving math problems.

“I had become the sole breadwinner of my family, and the responsibility was a huge one for a young child,” she once said. “At the age of 6, I gave my first major show at the University of Mysore, and this was the beginning of my marathon of public performances.”

Worldwide Recognition

In 1944, Shakuntala Devi went to London with her father. Subsequently, she travelled all over the world demonstrating her mathematical talent at colleges, in theatres and on radio and television. She toured Europe in 1950 and America in 1976.

When she appeared on the BBC, the answer she gave to a problem was found to not match with that of the interviewer’s. Turns out, the interviewer’s answer had been wrong and that Shakuntala Devi had been right all the time. This incident repeated itself at the University of Rome.

In 1977, she calculated the 23rd root of a 201 digit number at Southern Methodist University, Dallas 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. Oh yeah, the computer took 62 seconds.

In 1980, she multiplied two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds at the Imperial College, London. This feat earned her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1982. This feat is all the more remarkable because this 28 seconds includes the time taken to spell out the 26-digit solution!!!

The 2 numbers, selected at random by a computer, were: 7,686,369,774,870 & 2,465,099,745,779

The answer given by Mrs. Devi was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730

(Guess it would have taken you 28 seconds just to read the numbers!!!)

A list of “warm up” problems given, as requested by Mrs. Devi, during her demonstration at Stanford in 1988

In a 1990 journal article about Ms. Devi, Arthur R. Jensen, a researcher on human intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that unlike the Dustin Hoffman character in the movie “Rain Man,” an autistic savant who was also a mathematical prodigy, “Devi comes across as alert, extroverted, affable and articulate.”

Shakuntala Devi also possessed the calendar skill frequently demonstrated by other calculating prodigies. Given any specific date, she could state the day of the week it falls on without batting an eyelid. If the date was stated in the usual way (i.e., month, day, year) her average response time was about 1 s. But when the dates were stated to her in the order year, month, day, a stopwatch proved useless for measuring her response times. She could also list out all the dates on which a given day(eg: Wednesday), falls throughout a given year; or name all the days falling on a given date each month throughout the year. She could do this effortlessly in both the forward and the reverse directions with about equal speed.

An Interesting Anecdote

Once, a tired Shakuntala Devi was waiting at Bombay airport for a late night flight which was further delayed. Sitting next to her was another tired looking man with a musical instrument. In the hope that time would go faster if she spoke, she struck up a conversation with the man.

Looking at the instrument, she asked “What is its name?”, “Sitar” the man answered.

“You know how to play?” she asked in return, to which the man replied “Yes. I play a little bit of that.”

After some time, she said “You know, I am a big fan of Ravi Shankar and have listened to many of his works.” Not stopping with that, she added “If you are really fond of sitar, you should get a few lessons from Ravi Shankar”.

To which the man replied “I am Ravi Shankar!!”

Then she told him “I am going to be narrating this incident for the rest of my life”.

After some time, Ravi Shankar asked “May I know your name?” “My name is Shankuntala Devi” she answered.

Then he said “I am going to be narrating this incident for the rest of my life!!”

The Other Side

Around the mid 1960, she married Paritosh Banerji, an officer of the Indian Administrative Services from Kolkata. The marriage soon fell apart when his homosexuality was revealed. This lead her to delve into the world of homosexuality, which lead her to publish her book “The World Of Homosexuals”

Shakuntala Devi’s book, The World Of Homosexuals, can perhaps be hailed as the first book written in India demanding decriminalisation of homosexuality. This was nearly three decades before LGBTQ rights and Section 377 became a part of the general discourse in India.

Apart from this, she has also authored a number of books on Mathematics, Puzzles etc. I am proud to be the owner of 2 of those books.

To End…

Shakuntala Devi passed away on 21 April 2013, in Bangalore. The cause of death was said to be respiratory and cardiac problems. She was 83.

Personally, I feel Shakuntala Devi might have had more to her than her abilities to perform fast mental calculations. She was only seen as a person who could multiply two 8-digit numbers or calculate the 23rd root of a number in a matter of seconds. Maybe there was more to her than what met the eye. If she had gone into mathematical research, who knows, India (or the world) would have got another Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Some quotes by the mathematical prodigy:

It is important to approach Maths only in a spirit of curiosity and discovery.
As for numbers, they hate nobody and nobody can afford to hate them.
Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.