Shakuntala Devi

Born - 4 November 1939
Achievements - Shakuntala Devi is an outstanding calculating prodigy of India. On June 18 in 1980, she again solved the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 randomly picked up by the computer department of Imperial College in London. And this, she did in 28 seconds flat.

Born on 4 November in 1939 at the city of Bangalore in Karnataka state, Shakuntala Devi is an outstanding calculating prodigy of India. Belonging from a very humble family, Shakuntala Devi's father was employed as a trapeze and tightrope performer and later on, as a human cannonball in a circus. It was once while she was playing cards with her father at the age of three that it was discovered that she is a calculating genius. It turn out that she beat him not by slight of the hand, but by memorizing the cards.

Read on this biography to know more about the life history of Shakuntala Devi. When Shakuntala Devi was six years old, she demonstrated her calculation skills at the University of Mysore. And by the time, she was 8 years old, she had again proved herself successful at Annamalai University by doing the same. However despite apprehensions from some quarters, Shakuntala Devi did not lose her calculating ability with the setting in of adulthood like other prodigies such as Truman Henry Safford.

On the other hand, in the year 1977, Shakuntala Devi obtained the 23rd root of the digit number '201' mentally. On 18 June in 1980, she again solved the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 that were randomly picked by the computer department of Imperial College in London. And this, she did in 28 seconds flat. Her correct answer to this multiplication sum was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. This incident has been included on the 26th page of the famous 1995 Guinness Book of Records.