Shakuntala DeviShakuntala Devi, the Indian mathematical wizard known as "the human computer" for her ability to make incredibly swift calculations, died last month in Bangalore, India. She was 83.
Ms. Devi demonstrated her mathematical gifts around the world, at colleges, in theaters and on radio and television. In 1977, at a University in Dallas, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating a computer which took 62 seconds.
In 1980, at the Imperial College in London, she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers in only 28 seconds. The 28 seconds included the time to recite the 26-digit solution. The numbers were selected at random by a computer. Here is the calculation. Try and do it in your head!
7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779.
Struggling for the answer? Not even your calculator will give it to you. It is 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730.
If you are looking around in second hand book shops and come across Shakuntala's best selling book "The Joy Of Numbers" then make sure you buy it for your bookshelf.
No comments:
Post a Comment