Shakuntala Devi
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Who is Shakuntala Devi?
J.P.Bohre, NCERT- Contribution of Indian Mathematicians
(1) She was born in 1939.She is an Indian calculating prodigy.
(2) By age 6,She demonstrated her calculation and memorization abilities at university of Mysore. At the age of 8,she had successes at Annamalai University by doing the same.
(3) On June 18, 1980,She demonstrated the multiplication of two 13‐digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870X2,465,099.745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds. However,the time is more likely the time for dictating the answer (a 26‐digit number) than the time for mental calculation(the time of 28 seconds was quoted on her website).Her answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,773,730.This event is mentioned on page 26 of the 1995 Guinness Book of Records.
(4) In Dallas, she competed with a computer to see who give the cube of 188138517 faster, she won. At University of USA she was asked to give the 23rd root of
91674867692003915809866092758538016248310668014430862240712651642793465 70408670965932792057674808067900227830163549248523803357453169351119035 9657754734007568818688305620821016129132845564895780158806771.
She answered in 50 seconds. The answer is 546372891.It took a UNIVAC 1108 computer, full one minute (10 seconds more) to confirm that she was right after it was fed with 13000 instructions.
(5) Now she is known to be Human Computer.
Osho on Shakuntala Devi
Osho, August 8, 2020: The Times of India
In India there is a woman, Shakuntala, who has been around the world, in almost all universities, exhibiting her intuition. She is not a mathematician; she is not even much educated. Even when Albert Einstein was alive she was giving her demonstration in front of him (early ‘50s). She would sit with a chalk in her hand before the board: you would ask any kind of question about mathematics or arithmetic, and you would not have even finished the question and she would have started writing the answer. Albert Einstein gave her a certificate – she showed the certificate to me when I was in Madras (mid ‘60s). She showed me all her certificates, and the one from Einstein says, “I asked this woman a question which I take three hours to solve because I have to follow a whole method; I cannot just jump from the question to the answer. I know that nobody can do it in less time than I can, and that is three hours. But the whole procedure has to be followed. If you miss even a single step….” The figures were so big that it took the whole board for her to write the answer. And before he had even finished the question, she started writing the answer. He was puzzled, because it was impossible. He asked, “How do you do it?” She said, “I don't know how I do it – it simply happens. You ask me and figures start appearing before my eyes, somewhere inside. I can see 1, 2, 3, and I just go on writing.”
Shakuntala was born with her intuition functioning, but I felt really sad for her because she became just an exhibition. Nobody cared that a woman, who is born with intuition functioning, can become enlightened very easily. She is just standing on the brink; one step and she becomes the ultimate in consciousness. But she is not aware, because this (gift) is just a freak of nature. Abridged from From Misery to Enlightenment, Osho Times International, Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com.
