Shakuntala Devi: Human Computer
- PowHERup Staff
- Jul 31, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 4, 2020
QUICK FACTS
Born: November 4th, 1929 (Bangalore, India)
Died: April 21st, 2013
Books: Puzzles to Puzzle You, Astrology for You, In The Wonderland of Numbers, Figuring: The Joy of Numbers, Book of Numbers, Awaken the Genius in Your Child, More Puzzles to Puzzle You, Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child, Super Memory: Ageless Memory in 12 Practical Lessons, Perfect Murder, The World of Homosexuals, and more!
Spouse: Paritosh Banerjee
Children: Anupama Banerjee
Today is the official release date of Prime Video’s Shakuntala Devi. This movie has been long-awaited by many viewers and promises to be a comedy-and-drama-filled telling of the story of Devi’s life. But who was Shakuntala Devi, and what made her so famous?
Shakuntala Devi was born in 1929, in Bangalore, India. Her family was very poor, with her father working in a circus as a trapeze artist, lion tamer, tightrope walker, and more. When Devi was about 3 years old, he was teaching her a card trick when he realized her extraordinary talent to perform mathematical calculations extremely quickly - all in her head. After this discovery, Shakuntala Devi began going on road shows, showcasing her talent. At the age of five, she was able to do cube root calculation in her head! (I don’t know about y’all, but when I was five, I could barely add and subtract) She did all of this without any formal education.
At the age of 15, Devi and her father moved to London. She traveled the world and amazed everyone with her talents - she toured Europe in 1950, and she went to New York City when she was 47. A year later, in the Southern Methodist University, Devi gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit long number in 50 seconds! This marvelous feat landed her in the Guinness Book of World Records. In fact, the UNIVAC 1101 computer took longer than her to perform the calculation after it had been specially programmed to perform it. It’s no wonder that she was nicknamed the human computer!
Her seemingly impossible skills landed her in the limelight on many other occasions as well. 1980 was the year when she calculated the product of 7,686,369,774,870 and 2,465,099,745,779 in 28 SECONDS! That was how long it took her to say the answer (18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730). It would have taken me more than 28 seconds just to figure out what two numbers I was multiplying - forget about finding the answer! In 1988, Arthur Jensen, an American psychologist, studied her remarkable abilities. He tested her with various problems, including having her calculate the products and roots of large numbers. She supposedly correctly calculated the cube root of 61,629,875 and the seventh root of 170,859,375 before Jensen could copy down the problem in his notebook. Talk about fast!
Her skills in math weren’t the only things that distinguished her from everyone else. She authored multiple books, on topics ranging from mental math to astrology to murder mysteries. She was a pioneer of her time, living in a society where women were given minimal freedom, traveling the world and challenging the status quo. She was never afraid to speak her mind, making her opinions known on a topic that was (and still is) controversial: sexual orientation. She wrote a book on homosexuality in India, at a time and place where its very existence was often denied. She called for the country to not only make homosexuality legal but to accept it as it would anything else.
Her fiery passion and will to do what she believed to be right carried over into her later years in the form of politics. She ran for a position in the Indian parliament, contesting against former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi herself. She did not win, although she did get a good portion of the vote.
What can we learn from Shakuntala Devi? There are many lessons to be discovered from her very fruitful and vivacious life, but here are a few that PowHER Up would like to highlight.
Never be afraid to go for what you love and care about. Devi embodied this time and time again in her life, with her willingness to speak her mind and not let the norms and expectations of society confine her.
Don’t underestimate yourself. Perhaps, if Devi didn’t believe in her abilities and perform in front of all those people, she would have never gotten the recognition she has now. She had to have the confidence that she could do whatever she put her mind to.
Find people who will support you, and keep them close. If Shakuntala’s father didn’t recognize her talent, if Shakuntala brushed him off and didn’t take his support, it wouldn’t have been much harder for her to make it big in life and achieve great things.
And finally, don’t let your circumstances stop you from fulfilling your dreams. A girl who never went to school was able to travel the world and be known as the human computer. She was so poor that her family could not afford to educate her. But Shakuntala Devi never let any of that stop her.
Shakuntala Devi died on April 21, 2013, at the age of 83. Although she may not be here with us physically anymore, her life was a bright spark that lit an ever-burning flame in the hearts and minds of girls everywhere, sure to never go out.
Be sure to check out Shakuntala Devi on Amazon Prime Video! Let us know in the comments below whether you enjoyed the movie or not and if it lived up to the fame of Shakuntala Devi.
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