Daniel Tammet meets Kim Peek
Posted on January 7, 2008 | Category: SuperHumans (series)
Daniel Paul Tammet (born January 31, 1979) is a British autistic savant (though he has learned how to manage social interaction) gifted with a facility for mathematics problems, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy.
Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a well-documented form of synesthesia, but Tammet is unique in how specific and detailed his mental imagery of numbers is. He claims that in his mind each number, up to 10,000, has its own unique shape and feel, and he can “sense” whether a number is prime or composite and “see” results of calculations as landscapes in his mind.
Tammet holds the European record for remembering and recounting pi, recounting it to its 22,514th digit in just over 5 hours. This sponsored charity challenge was held in aid of the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) on 14 March 2004 (Pi Day) at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, UK. The NSE was chosen to benefit from this event because Daniel experienced several seizures as a young child.
Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University said of Tammet: “savants can’t usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That’s why he’s exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone.”
He can speak at least English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Estonian, Icelandic, and Esperanto. He likes Estonian very much because it is rich in vowels. He has even changed his second name to Estonian-based word Tammet, which comes from the Estonian word Tamm meaning oak. Tammet is making a new language called Mänti. Mänti has many features related to Finnish and Estonian. In addition, some sources cite Uusisuom and Lapsi as two more languages Tammet has created.
He was the subject of a documentary in the UK titled The Boy With The Incredible Brain that was broadcast on Five on May 24, 2005 (also broadcast under the title “Brainman”). It showed highlights of his feat of recalling pi as well as his meeting with Kim Peek, another individual who is famous for having savant skills. In one emotional moment of the show, Peek hugged Tammet and told him “Some day you will be as great as I am.”
Tammet claims he can learn a new language within a week. For the documentary film about him, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television to be interviewed. One of the interviewers said on camera that Tammet responded to questions, however this was not shown in the documentary, so it is not clear whether Tammet’s speech in Icelandic were prepared responses or actual responses to questions.
Kim Peek
Kim Peek (born November 11, 1951, a Sunday) is an individual diagnosed with Savant Syndrome with a photographic or eidetic memory and developmental disabilities, resulting from congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbit, played by Dustin Hoffman, in the movie Rain Man.
Kim Peek was born with macrocephaly, damage to the cerebellum, and, most importantly, agenesis of the corpus callosum, a condition in which the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is missing; in Peek’s case, secondary connectors such as the anterior commissure are also missing. There is speculation that his neurons make other connections in the absence of a corpus callosum, which results in an increased memory capacity.
According to Peek’s father, Fran, Peek was able to memorize things from the age of 16-20 months. He read books, memorized them, and then placed them upside down on the shelf to show that he had finished reading them, a practice he still maintains. He reads a page of text in about 10 seconds (about a book per hour) and, apparently, remembers everything he has read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography, and numbers, to sports, music, and dates. He can recall some 12,000 books from memory. Peek can also do formidable calculations in his head, a skill that serves him well in his day job, where he prepares payroll worksheets. He has worked at a day workshop for adults with disabilities since 1969.
Peek did not walk until the age of four and still walks in a sidelong manner. He cannot button up his shirt and has difficulty with other ordinary motor skills, presumably due to his damaged cerebellum, which normally coordinates motor activities. In psychological testing, Peek has scored well below average on general IQ tests; however he has scored very highly in some subtests. The mixed results have led to the conclusion that such tests are not an adequate yardstick to measure Peek’s abilities.
In 1984, script writer Barry Morrow met Peek in Arlington, Texas; the result of the meeting was the 1988 movie Rain Man. The character of Raymond Babbit, although inspired by Peek, was portrayed as having autism. Dustin Hoffman, who played Babbit, met Peek and other savants to get an understanding of their nature and to play the role with accuracy. The movie caused a number of requests for appearances, which has increased Peek’s self-confidence. Barry Morrow has given Kim his Oscar to carry with him and show at these appearances. He enjoys approaching strangers and showing them his talent for calendar calculations by telling them on which day of the week they were born. Peek has also appeared on television. He travels with his father, who takes care of him and performs many motor tasks that Peek finds difficult.
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