Daniel Tammet: biography, personal life, creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speed. But unlike other savants, he is able to describe how it happens. Daniel speaks seven languages and even develops his own. Scientists wonder if his exceptional ability holds the key to autism.

Daniel Tammet: interesting facts

Tammet says. And while he does this, he examines the shirt of the interlocutor and counts the stitches. Ever since Daniel had an epileptic seizure at the age of three, he has become obsessed with counting. Now 37, he is a math genius who can calculate cube roots faster than a calculator and memorize 22,514 digits of pi. In addition, he is autistic and cannot drive a car, plug a plug into an outlet, and tell left from right. He has unlimited and limited abilities.

Daniel Tammet (photo posted later in the article) multiplies 377 by 795. In fact, he does not perform any calculations, and in fact,what he does, there is nothing conscious. The answer comes instantly. Since the epileptic seizure, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colors, and textures. The number two, for example, represents movement, and five represents thunder. When he multiplies, he sees two figures. The image begins to change and develop, transforming into a third form. This is the answer. These are mental images. It's like math you don't have to think about.

One in a hundred

Who is Daniel Tammet? He is a savant, a man with amazing, extraordinary mental abilities. Experts estimate that 10% of autistics and 1% of non-autistics are savants, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists hope that Daniel can help figure this out. Professor Allan Snyder of the Center for Mind at the National University of Australia in Canberra explains why Tammet is of particular scientific interest. According to the scientist, savants usually cannot tell us how they do what they do. The answer just "comes" to them. But Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's what makes him interesting. It may become the new Rosetta Stone.

There are many theories to explain this phenomenon. Snyder, for example, believes that all people have extraordinary abilities. The only question is how to access them. Savants tend to have brain damage. It's either the onset of dementia, or a blow to the head, or, in Daniel's case, an epileptic seizure. It is brain damage that produces savants. Therefore, a perfectly normal personcan also access these abilities.

The brain scans of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere is compensating for damage to the left. Although many autistic people struggle with languages and comprehension (skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere), they often have amazing abilities in math and memory. They have a limited vocabulary, but Tammet doesn't.

Estonian-Finnish Conlang

Daniel creates his own artificial language based on the rich vowels and imagery of northern European languages. He already speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic and Esperanto. The vocabulary of his Mänti language reflects the relationship between different things. The word ema, for example, is translated as "mother," and ela is what she creates: "life." Päike is "the sun" and päive is what happens due to the luminary: "by day". Tammet hopes that his study of words and their relationships will spread in academia.

Phenomenal memory

Daniel Tammet broke the European record by reproducing the most decimal places of pi from memory. It was easy for him - he didn't even have to think about it. According to him, Pi is not an abstract set of numbers; it is a visual narrative, a film projected before his eyes. Last year he learned the number in both directions and spent five hours remembering it in front of the jury. He memorized 22,514 characters, technically being an invalid. Tammet wanted to show people thatdisability is not a hindrance.

French and Spanish courses

Daniel Tammet has never been able to work nine to five. It was difficult for him to comply with the generally accepted life, as he had to do everything at the same time. Instead, Daniel set up a home business, teaching Optimnem language, arithmetic, and literacy courses via e-mail. This kept human interaction to a minimum and gave him time to work on the verb structures of his conlang.

Autistic savants have shown a wide range of abilities, from repeating word for word all nine volumes of the Grove Dictionary of Music to determining exact distances with the naked eye. Blind American Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 after hearing it for the first time, although he never took lessons on the instrument. And British savant Stephen Wiltshire drew an accurate map of London from memory after a single helicopter ride over the city. However, Tammet is considered more important to science.

Daniel Tammet: Biography

Daniel was born on 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 prime. And it's kind of a sign. At birth, he had a different surname, Corny, but it did not match the way he saw himself. He found the word "tammet" on the Internet. It means "oak" in Estonian, and he liked the association. In addition, Daniel has always loved vowel-rich Estonian.language.

As a child, he hit his head against the wall and screamed constantly. Nobody knew what happened to him. His mother was alarmed and rocked him to sleep. She breastfed him until the age of two. Doctors said that the child did not have enough incentives. And then, when he was playing with his brother in the living room, he had an epileptic fit.

He was given epilepsy medicine and banned from the sun. The boy had to visit the hospital every month for regular blood tests. He hated it, but he knew it had to be done. To compensate, his father always bought him a glass of juice while they were in line. Daniel's grandfather died of epilepsy and everyone was very worried about him.

Tammet's mother was an assistant secretary and his father worked with sheet steel. They both graduated from high school with no qualifications, but they made the kids feel special-all nine of them. Daniel was the oldest. His younger siblings were better at swimming, catching and hitting 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 at the age of four. When he looked at the numbers, he saw pictures. He felt that this was a place meant for him, and that was great. Daniel escaped to another reality at every opportunity. He sat on the floor of his bedroom and counted, not noticing how time passed. And only when his mother called for dinner or someone knocked on the door, he came out of this state.

One day his brother asked him to multiply the number 82 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 just flew out of his mouth. The brother asked a few more questions and got correct answers to them. Tammet's parents were not surprised. And they never forced him to demonstrate his abilities to neighbors. They knew that Daniel was different, but they wanted him to have as normal a life as possible.

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

Passion for collecting and languages

As Tammet got older, he developed a passion for collecting everything from chestnuts to newspapers. He remembers the first time he saw a 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, he gave a box of ladybugs to Daniel's classmate to release them into the wild. Tammet was so upset that he cried when he found out about it. The teacher didn't understand Daniel's world.

After graduating high school with A's in History, French and German, he decided he wanted to teach, but not in the traditional way. First, he went to Lithuania, where he worked as a volunteer. Since he was there of his own accord,got a lot of freedom. The time of the classes was not hard, and the program was compiled by him. For the first time, he was introduced by name, and not as "a guy who can do strange things in his mind." It was a pleasant relief for him. After returning home, he lived with his parents and found a job as a math tutor.

Private life

Tammet met his first love, software engineer Neil Mitchell, online. It all started with an email exchange of photos, but ended up with a meeting. Daniel couldn't drive, and Neal offered to pick him up from home and take him to his place in Kent. He was silent the whole way. Tammet thought that nothing good would come of it. But before they even got to Neil's house, Neil stopped the car and pulled out a bunch of flowers. And only later it turned out that he was laconic, as he is always very focused behind the wheel.

Neil was as shy as Daniel Tammet. They had a happy personal life. The only aspect of autism that causes problems is the lack of empathy. Jews say if someone's relative hangs himself, don't ask him where to hang his coat. Daniel constantly has to remind himself of this.

In his free time, Tammet loves to hang out with his friends on the church's connoisseur team. His knowledge of pop culture isn't great, but he's on a roll when it comes to math. Daniel loves numbers. And this is not only something intellectual, he really feels the presence of emotional attachment, concern for numbers. Just as a poet animates a river or a tree through metaphor, Daniel's world allows him to feel numbers as individuals. Although it sounds silly, he says numbers are his friends.

Bestselling Author

Daniel Tammet's writing began in 2005. His first book, Born on a Blue Day, sub titled Asperger's Memoirs and Extraordinary Mind, was first published in the UK in 2006 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. Published in the US in 2007, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 8 weeks. In 2008, the American Library Association named it Best Book for Young Adults. It has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages.

In 2009, Daniel Tammet published Embracing the Wide Sky, a personal overview of modern neuroscience. The French edition, translated by the author himself, became one of the best-selling non-fiction books of the year. It has also appeared on the bestseller lists in the UK, Canada and Germany, and has been translated into many languages.

Thinking in Numbers, Tammet's first essay collection, published August 2012.

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

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