Shelomoh Gaines
Mr.Williams
American literature
12-4-14
Daniel Tammet: The man with the incredible brain
This is the breathtaking story of Daniel Tammet. A twenty-something with extraordinary
mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal
places in his head, and learn a language in a week. He also meets the world’s most famous
savant, the man who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in the Oscar winning film ‘Rain Man’.
Though he was not always able to do these calculations in his head like this a tragic accident
happened when he was young and little but tremendously he makes a full recovery with new
mental powers after his rehab.
Daniel was born Daniel Paul Corney and raised in Barking, East London, England, and
the eldest of nine children. He suffered epileptic seizures as a young child, which he
subsequently outgrew following medical treatment. At age twenty-five, he was diagnosed with
Asperger syndrome by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of the Autism (Spectrum) Research Centre
at Cambridge University. Tammet is one of fewer than a hundred "prodigious savants" according
to Dr. Darold Treffert, the world's leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome. Tammet
twice participated in the World Memory Championships in London under his birth name, placing
12th in 1999 and 4th in 2000.He changed his birth name by deed poll because "it didn't fit with
the way he saw himself." He took the word Tammet from the Estonian for 'oak tree'.Tammet was
the subject of a documentary film entitled (in the UK) The Boy with the Incredible Brain, first
broadcast on the British television station Channel 4 on 23 May 2005.
After his first broadcast, researchers called his bluff about learning to speak a new
language fluently in just 7 days. That was one of the bluffs that he had to prove but the most
amazing thing he can do is calculate numbers to hundreds of decimal places, so far he has
counted pie to its last decimal place of 22000 decimal places. He says the numbers pop in his
head and form a new pattern but that new pattern in his head shows the answer.
Daniel is the only perfect savant with any physical or psychological disabilities.
Researchers say he is the key to an evolution in the human race and want to discover more about
him. The limit to his mind is a mystery making him truly a limitless man.
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