Daniel Tammet: biography, personal life, creativity

Daniel Tammet is an autistic-savant. It can, with dizzying speed, produce stunning mathematical calculations. But unlike other savants, he is able to describe how this happens. Daniel speaks seven languages and even develops his own. Scientists are wondering whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unraveling autism.

Daniel Tammet: Interesting Facts

Tammet says. And while he does it, he studies the shirt of the interlocutor and counts the stitches. Since the epileptic seizure occurred at the age of three with Daniel , he became obsessed with the score. Now he is 37, he is a mathematical genius who can calculate the cube roots faster than the calculator and memorize 22514 Pi digits. In addition, he is an autistic and can not drive a car, plug the plug into the outlet and distinguish the left side from the right. He has unlimited and limited abilities.

Daniel Tammet (photo posted later in the article) multiplies 377 by 795. In fact, it does not produce any calculations, and there's nothing conscious about what he does. The answer comes instantly. Since the epileptic seizure, he is able to see numbers as forms, colors and textures. The figure two, for example, represents a movement, and five is a roll of thunder. When he multiplies, he sees two figures. The image begins to change and evolve, transforming into a third form. This is the answer. These are mental images. This is like mathematics, which you do not need to think about.

One by one

Who is Daniel Tammet? He is a savant, a man with amazing, extraordinary mental abilities. According to experts, 10% of autists and 1% of nonautists are savants, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists hope that Daniel can help in this sort out. Professor Allan Snyder of the Center of Reason at the National University of Australia in Canberra explains why Tammet is of particular scientific interest. According to the scientist, savants usually can not tell us how they do what they do. The answer simply "comes" to them. But Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. This is what makes it interesting. It can become a new Rosetta stone.

There are many theories explaining this phenomenon. Snyder, for example, believes that all people have extraordinary abilities. The only question is how to access them. In savants, as a rule, the brain is damaged. This is either the onset of dementia, or a blow to the head, or, in the case of Daniel, an epileptic seizure. It is the brain damage that generates the savants. Therefore, a perfectly normal person can also gain access to these abilities.

Scans of the brain of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere compensates for damage in the left hemisphere. Although many autistic people are struggling with languages and understanding (skills related primarily to the left hemisphere), they often have amazing abilities in the field of mathematics and memory. They have a limited vocabulary, but Tammet does not.

The Estonian-Finnish conlang

Daniel creates his own artificial language, based on the vaulted and imaginative languages of Northern Europe. He already speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic and Esperanto. The dictionary of his language Mänti reflects the relationship between different things. The word ema, for example, translates as "mother," and ela is what it creates: "life." Päike is the "sun", and päive is what happens due to the luminary: "in the afternoon". Tammet hopes that his study of words and their interrelationships will spread in academic circles.

Phenomenal memory

Daniel Tammet broke the European record, from memory, reproducing the largest number of digits after the decimal point of Pi. For him it was easy - he did not even have to think about it. According to him, Pi is not an abstract set of figures; This is a visual story, a film projected before his eyes. Last year he learned the number in both directions and spent five hours remembering it before the jury. He memorized 22,514 signs, technically being disabled. Tammet wanted to show people that disability is not a hindrance.

Courses in French and Spanish

Daniel Tammet was never able to work from nine to five. It was difficult for him to live up to the standard life, because he had to do everything at the same time. Instead, Daniel created a home business by e-mailing foreign language courses, arithmetic and letters to Optimnem. This reduced human communication to a minimum and gave him time to work on the verbal structures of his conglomerate.

Autistic savants displayed a wide range of abilities, from word-for-word repetition of all nine volumes of the Grove music dictionary to determining precise distances with the naked eye. Blind American Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's concert for piano and orchestra No. 1 after he heard it for the first time, although he never took lessons on the instrument. And the British Savant Stephen Wiltshire from memory drew a precise map of London after a single helicopter trip over the city. Nevertheless, Tammet is considered more important for science.

Daniel Tammet: Biography

Daniel was born January 31, 1979 in a poor suburb of London. This date makes him smile, as he notes that the numbers 31, 19, 79 and 1979 are simple. And this is a kind of sign. At birth, he had a different surname, Roots, but she did not match the way he saw himself. The word "tamet" he found on the Internet. In Estonian it means "oak", and he liked such an association. In addition, Daniel always loved the Estonian-language rich in vowels.

As a child, he hit his head against the wall and constantly shouted. Nobody knew what happened to him. His mother was alarmed and shook him so he fell asleep. She nursed him until two years old. Doctors said that the child does not have enough incentives. And then, when he was playing with his brother in the living room, he suffered an epileptic fit.

He was given a cure for epilepsy and was forbidden to visit the sun. The boy had to visit the hospital on a monthly basis for regular blood tests. He hated it, but he knew that it was necessary. To compensate, his father always bought him a glass of juice while they were sitting in line. Daniel's grandfather died of epilepsy, and everyone worried about him.

Tammet's mother was an assistant secretary, and his father worked with sheet steel. They both graduated from school without qualification, but they made children feel special - all nine. Daniel was the oldest. His younger brothers and sisters swam better than him, fished and beat the ball, but they loved him, because he was their big brother and could read fairy tales to them.

Amazing abilities

Temmet remembers how he was given a book about the account in four years. When he looked at the numbers, he saw the pictures. He felt that this place was meant for him, and it was great. Daniel ran off into another reality at every opportunity. He sat on the floor of his bedroom and counted, not noticing how time passes. And only when his mother called for lunch or someone knocked at the door, he left this state.

One day his brother asked him to multiply the number 82 by four times. Daniel looked at the floor and closed his eyes, his back straightened, and his hands clenched into fists. But after 5 or 10 seconds the answer simply flew out of his mouth. The brother asked a few more questions and received correct answers. Tammet's parents were not surprised. And they never forced him to demonstrate their abilities to neighbors. They knew that Daniel was different, but wanted him to have a normal life, as much as possible.

Daniel Tammet loved to visit the church, because then he could sing hymns. The notes in his head formed into pictures, just like numbers. The rest of the children did not know what was wrong with him, and they teased him. At the change, Daniel hurried to the school yard, but not to play football, but to count the leaves in the trees.

Passion for collecting and languages

When Tammet grew older, he developed a passion for collecting everything from chestnuts to newspapers. He remembers the first time he saw the ladybug. He liked it so much that he collected hundreds of beetles and showed them to the teacher. He was amazed and, having occupied him with something, gave a box of ladybirds to the classmate Daniel, so that he let them go. Tammet was so upset that he cried when he found out about it. Teacher did not understand the world of Daniel.

After finishing school with the highest scores in history, French and German, he decided that he wanted to teach, but not in the traditional way. To begin with, he went to Lithuania, where he worked as a volunteer. Because there he was of his own free will, he was given a lot of freedom. The time of classes was not rigid, and the program was compiled by him. For the first time he was introduced by name, and not as "a guy who knows how to do strange things in his head". For him it was a pleasant relief. Returning home, he lived with his parents and found a job as a mathematics tutor.

Personal life

Tammet met his first love, software engineer Neil Mitchell, online. It all started with photo sharing via email, but eventually ended up with a meeting. Daniel could not drive a car, and Neal suggested taking him out of the house and taking him to Kent. He was silent all the way. Tammet thought that nothing good would happen. But even before they reached the house of the Nile, he stopped the car and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. And only later it turned out that he was not very terse, since he was always very focused behind the wheel.

Neal was as shy as Daniel Tammet. Their personal lives passed happily. The only aspect of autism that causes problems is the lack of empathy. Jews say if someone has a relative hanged, do not ask him where to hang his coat. Daniel constantly has to remind himself about this.

In his spare time Tammet likes to hang out with his friends on the church team of experts. His knowledge of pop culture is not great, but he is on horseback when it comes to mathematics. Daniel likes figures. And this is not only something intellectual, it really feels the presence of emotional attachment, concern for numbers. Just as a poet animates a river or tree through metaphors, Daniel's world allows him to feel numbers as individuals. According to him, although this sounds silly, but the figures are his friends.

Best-seller

Daniel Tammet's literary work began in 2005. His first book, "Born on a Blue Day," with the subtitle "Asperger's Memoirs and Extraordinary Mind", was first published in the UK in 2006 and became the best-selling Sunday Times. Published in the US in 2007, she was on the New York Times best-selling list for 8 weeks. In 2008, the American Library Association called it the best book for young people. It sold over 500 thousand copies worldwide, and it was translated into more than 20 languages.

In 2009, Daniel Tammet published a book "Embracing the Wide Sky", a personal review of modern neuroscience. The French edition, in the translation of which the author participated, became one of the best-selling popular science books of the year. It also appeared on the bestseller lists in the UK, Canada and Germany, and has been translated into many languages.

"Thinking in numbers," the first collection of Tammet's essays, was published in August 2012. "

In 2008, Daniel emigrated to France, to Paris, where he lives with Jérôme Tabet, a French photographer, whom he met, spreading his biography.

In 2012, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Arts.