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Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant. He can calculate huge sums in his head in seconds and instantaneously recognise prime numbers, but he finds emotions difficult to understand and has trouble telling left from right. One of fewer than fifty such people living worldwide, Daniel is unique in his ability to articulate his savant experience. He describes his visual experience of numbers as complex synaesthetic shapes with colour, texture and motion. Thirty-seven is lumpy like porridge, while eighty-nine reminds him of falling snow. Sequences of digits form visual landscapes in his mind. In March 2004, Daniel set a European record when he recited the famous mathematical constant Pi to 22,514 decimal places in a time of 5 hours. He has been extensively studied by scientists at California’s Center for Brain Studies and at the Cambridge Autism Research Centre UK and has been described as autism’s ‘Rosetta Stone’.
“In a way, one might say Tammet has come back from the country of autism, which is a very difficult place for researchers and for parents to reach.” (ABC News, June 2005)
“Unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.” (Guardian, February 2005)
“Now he is helping scientists to establish how his incredible talent works, and whether we all have latent abilities. A colleague of mine said she thinks he is straight out of science fiction - a prototype for a new human being. He's certainly the most extraordinary person I have ever met.” (Richard and Judy column, Daily Express, May 2005)
“But something in the way that Mr. Tammet describes the beautiful, aching, hallucinatory process of arriving at his answers illuminates the excitement of all cogitation.” (New York)
external link
The official site of Daniel Tammet: http://www.optimnem.co.uk
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