Born | November 4, 1929 Bangalore, British India |
Died | |
Cause of death | |
Nationality | Indian |
Other names | |
Occupation | |
Biography
Shakuntala Devi was born in Bangalore, India, to an orthodox priestly KannadaBrahmin family. Her father rebelled against becoming a temple priest and instead joined a circus, where he worked as a trapeze and tightrope performer, and later as a lion tamer and a human cannonball. Shakuntala Devi was only around three years old and she was roped in to help her father with card tricks. Her father left the circus and took her on road shows that displayed her amazing ability at number crunching. Her calculating gifts first demonstrated themselves while she was doing card tricks with her father when she was three. They report she "beat" them by memorization of cards rather than by sleight of hand. By age six she demonstrated her calculation and memorization abilities at the University of Mysore.[1][dead link] At the age of eight she had success at Annamalai University by doing the same. In 2006 she released In the Wonderland of Numbers with Orient Paperbackswhich talks about a girl Neha and her fascination for numbers. She developed the concept of `mind dynamics`.
Shakuntala Devi
Shakuntala Devi returned to India in the mid-1960s and married Paritosh Bannerji, an IAS officer from
Kolkata. The couple, however, divorced in 1979 and Shakuntala Devi returned to Bangalore in early 1980s and started offering astrological advice to hundreds of people, including celebrities, politicians and anyone who approached her. Bannerji passed away in 2010 in Kolkata.
Kolkata. The couple, however, divorced in 1979 and Shakuntala Devi returned to Bangalore in early 1980s and started offering astrological advice to hundreds of people, including celebrities, politicians and anyone who approached her. Bannerji passed away in 2010 in Kolkata.
Achievements
- In 1977 in Dallas she competed with a computer to see who give the cube root of 188138517 faster, she won. At an American university she was asked to give the 23rd root of 91674867692003915809866092758538016248310668014430862240712651642793465704086709659 3279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305 620821016129132845564805780158806771. She answered in 50 seconds. Her answer of 546372891 took a UNIVAC 1108 computer a full minute (10 seconds more) to confirm that she was right after it was fed with 13000 instructions.
- On June 18, 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds. This event is mentioned in the 1995 Guinness Book of Records.
Personal life
Devi was an astrologer and gave remedies purportedly based on date and time of birth and place (see Astrology for You linked below).
Death
On April 21, 2013 at around 8:15 am, Shakuntala Devi died at a hospital in Bangalore, India. She had been admitted to the Bangalore hospital on April 3 as her kidneys had become weak and she also had respiratory problems. She was 83 years old and is survived by a daughter. Hundreds of people, including relatives and admirers, were present at her last rites, which were conducted in a southern suburb of the city of Bangalore in the evening
Books
Some of her books include:
- More Puzzles to Puzzle You (New Delhi: Orient,
- Puzzles to Puzzle You (New Delhi: Orient, 2005.
- Book of Numbers (New Delhi: Orient, 2006).
- Perfect Murder (New Delhi: Orient, 1976),
- Figuring: The Joy of Numbers (New York: Harper & Row, 1977),
- The World of Homosexuals (New Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1977), ISBN-10: 0706904788, ISBN-13: 978-0706904789
- In the Wonderland of Numbers (New Delhi: Orient, 2006).
- Super Memory: It Can Be Yours (New Delhi: Orient, 2011).
- (Sydney: New Holland, 2012).
- Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child
- Astrology for You (New Delhi: Orient, 2005).
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