Daniel Tammet 'witch' of numbers

According to experts, Daniel Tammet is one of less than 100 ' strange geniuses ' of the world, ie people with autism or other neurological disorders but possessing more abilities than people.

At first glance, this 28-year-old British guy looks like other normal people: he knows how to invite guests to drink water, look in their eyes when talking, not stand in someone else's place .

Great childhood

Daniel Tammet was born on January 31, 1979 in London (England) in a family of nine children. In his childhood, he often suffered from seizures. Growing up a little, Daniel was often bullied by teenage kids. Lonely childhood, sickness made Daniel live like a weak snail.

He hid his childhood years in the world of numbers. Numbers are ' creatures ' who know how to live, breathe, be the only friend of Daniel . When he was 25 years old, he was diagnosed with Asperger's disease, a form of autism that limits his ability to communicate or build building relationships with others.

The creature takes Daniel's life skills as a normal person, but gives him another strange ability : he has a ' feeling of cohesion ' syndrome, which sees numbers in shape, color and Different structures. ' For example, number 1 is bright, as if someone uses a flashlight to illuminate my eyes. Number 5 is like thunder or waves hitting rocks. The number 37 is porridge like porridge, and the number 89 reminds me of the snowfall, "Daniel explained.

This strange feeling has turned Daniel Tammet into the " witch " of numbers, with superhuman memory and math. In 2004, he set a European record after remembering and correctly reading 22,514 digits of the sequence of pi numbers in five consecutive hours! Many British and American professionals studied Daniel's strange brain and came to a general conclusion: he had a true giftedness, not just trying to " remember how to sabotage " numbers.

Daniel Tammet (Photo: NY Times)

A week of learning a foreign language

Not only at the arithmetic ability, Daniel also possesses a special gift for foreign languages. Passion came to Daniel when he was 9 years old, watching the Seoul Olympics. From the arising of interest in different countries, he began to learn the alphabets, then the foreign language. Now, Daniel is not only fluent in 10 languages, including less popular languages ​​like Lithuania, Estonia and Esperanto (Esperanto), but he also has a language of his own, called Mati.

Can calculate in the blink of an eye the results of ' headaches ' such as 82 redundancy 4, or talk in Icelandic with the interviewer on a television program just a week after knowing this language, but in life, Daniel struggled to get used to the most social behavior.

They are the result of the observation process and the hard work of practicing. He had to constantly remind himself to look into the eyes of others and listen attentively to what they said. Normally, Daniel could not follow through the conversation. ' It's like connecting points in a children's coloring book. I can see these points but I don't know what they'll make after being connected to each other, '- Daniel said. Other brains also make him have quite eccentric habits, such as eating only 45 grams of porridge every morning (Daniel uses electronic scales to accurately weigh), less or more than 1 gram will also be ' story '. big 'with him.

That is why Daniel released the autobiography Born on a blue day (temporarily translated Welcome to the blue day ) has surprised many people. Surprisingly not only because it is one of the rare books written by an autistic person about his complex world, but also because he has a very coherent way of writing and a very logical explanation. Perhaps this is another mystery about the special ability of this strange genius that scientists still cannot explain.

THANH TRUC