Daniel Tammet- Savantism

Tammet's memory, mathematical and linguistic abilities have been studied by some of the world's leading neuroscientists at California's Center for Brain Studies and the UK's Cambridge Autism Research Centre and have been the subject of several peer-reviewed scientific papers. Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University has said of Tammet: "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can describe what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the 'Rosetta Stone'." Tammet's unusually vivid and complex synesthesia has been widely reported. In his mind, he says, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, colour, texture and feel. He can intuitively "see" results of calculations as synaesthetic landscapes without using conscious mental effort and can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and Pi as beautiful. The number 6 apparently has no distinct image yet what he describes as an almost small nothingness, opposite to the number 9 which he calls large and towering. Tammet has described 25 as energetic and the "kind of number you would invite to a party". Tammet not only verbally describes these visions, but has also created artwork, including a watercolour painting of Pi. Tammet holds the European record for reciting Pi from memory to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes on 14 March 2004. Tammet's record currently ranks 6th in the world. Tammet states in Born On A Blue Day that he speaks ten languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Finnish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Icelandic, Welsh, and Esperanto. This fact makes him a hyperpolyglot. He learned conversational Icelandic in one week, a fact he demonstrated with a television interview conducted entirely in the language His instructor described Tammet's feat as "not human" and "genius!". Segments of the interview showing Tammet responding to questions in Icelandic were televised on 28 January 2007 edition of the CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes. His savant abilities were showcased in a documentary film entitled (in the UK) The Boy With The Incredible Brain, first broadcast on the British television station Channel Five on 23 May 2005. The documentary showed him meeting Kim Peek, a world famous savant. Peek was shown hugging Tammet telling him that "Some day you will be as great as I am," to which Tammet replied, "That was a wonderful compliment; what an aspiration to have!".