#shakuntala devi

[cosmonautroger]

Shakuntala Devi, 1980

[mudwerks]

(via Rare Video of Human Computer Shakuntala Devi solving math at Guinness book of world record Office)

[gregorygalloway]

Shakuntala Devi (4 November 1929 – 21 April 2013)

[huesofocean]

I just love the "we goin places" genre. I love the show/movie where character goes to a lot of counties. I love the amazing languages they learn along the way. The diversity and all new characters the protagonist meets in those countries. The food, the outfits, new rooms, amazing places they visit, festivals and rituals I'm just a WHORE for the show/movie showing all of that.

[mitskibf]

watching the biopic they made on Shakuntala Devi starring Vidya Balan and they,,,,erased the fact,,,,that her husband was gay???? they literally said Shakuntala Devi made it up so she could sell her book on homosexuality???? I don't know if they're gonna fix this somehow in the last 30 minutes but this was exactly what I was afraid of :)))))

[aadhiskanmani]

[cynicalities]

On loop today:

इंग्लैंड की रानी कोई भी हो,

दुनिया की रानी हिन्दुस्तानी।

[kalyan-gullapalli]

Post # 108

The "humane" computer - Shakuntala Devi...

On 31st July this year, Prime Video will premiere a movie, a biopic, of the legendary human computer from Bengaluru - Shakuntala Devi, portrayed by the inimitable Vidya Balan. I am excited about the premiere.

As a kid, I had solved a few (only a few!) of the puzzles in her book - Puzzles to puzzle you. By the way, Shakuntala Devi was a prolific writer. Though she was known for her maths problem-solving books, she has authored quite a few books in the other genres.

It surprised me to learn that Shakuntala Devi had no formal education. She came from an under- privileged background. Three months into her schooling, she had to discontinue because her father couldn't pay her school fees. She never went back to school. But she travelled the world, spoke exceptional English, wrote books, broke records and became an international personality.

Her father was a circus trapeze artist. When she was three years old, he observed that Shakuntala had a knack for numbers. She could remember numbers on cards and was quick with calculations. He was convinced she was a prodigy when, at the age of five, she could do cube roots. So he quit his low paying circus act and started doing roadshows showcasing her talent with numbers. Soon, she started earning good money.

At the age of six, she began to display her talent in promininent universities like Mysore university, Annamalai university, Osmania university and Andhra university.

By the time she was 15 years, her father took her international. In 1944, she went to London. There was no looking back. Her fame spread as she toured the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, Sri Lanka, Italy, Canada, Russia, France, Spain, Mauritius, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Some of her shows have attained legendary status. Here are a few stories from her lore:

1. Finding the 23rd root of a 201 digit number in 50 seconds, when it had taken a professor four minutes to write the question on the black board, and it had taken a UNIVAC computer more than a minute to arrive at the answer!!!

2. Once she was asked to multiply two randomly picked 13 digit numbers - 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779. She gave the correct answer within 28 seconds. This incident booked her a place in the ‘Guinness Book of Records’ in 1982.

3. She had featured on the BBC show where the host, Leslie Mitchell, presented her a complex math problem. Shakuntala solved the problem within a few seconds but the host said that her answer was incorrect as it didn’t match the answer which was calculated by their team. Later, the host realised that Shakuntala’s answer was correct. After the incident, she was titled as “The Human Computer.”

There is another side to this lady that I got to know recently. And my respect for her grew multi-fold.

She got married in 1960 to an IAS officer from Kolkata, Paritosh Banerjee. They have a daughter, Anupama Banerjee. However, they got divorced in 1979.

In 1977, she authored a book, The world of homosexuals, which is widely regarded as the pioneering book which spoke about and supported the LGBT community, 36 years before the Supreme court of India decriminalized homosexuality.

In this book, she advocated that homosexuality was as old as humanity, it was not immoral, homosexuals are just different and needed to be accepted as such. It turns out that the inspiration for this book was her husband, Paritosh, who was himself a homosexual.

Looks like the 'human computer' had a humane side too that needs to be acknowledged. Respect!

Shakuntala Devi was also an astrologer. She wrote a few books on astrology too.

After she died, somebody put it this nice little tribute , which said her newspaper ads on her astrological services will be missed.

Shakuntala Devi died in 2013, at the age of 83, in Bangalore of respiratory, heart and kidney failures. On 4th November that year, Google commemorated her birth anniversary with a doodle.