Happy Brithday Shakuntala Devi

[xl_target]

I don't know how many today have heard of Shakuntala Devi but her mathematical abilities were discussed quite often when I was growing up.
On November 4th, she would have been 84. Unfortunately she died earlier this year.

Well, Happy Birthday to you, Shakuntala Devi.

[dr.jayakumar]

well i saw something like 6000LE on google,and learnt that it was a mathmathicians birthday.but never heard her before.
regards
dr.jk

[timmy]

From the wikipedia:

In 1977 at the Southern Methodist University she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number; she answered in 50 seconds. Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the U.S. Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.
On June 18, 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers — 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 — picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds. This event is mentioned in the 1982 Guinness Book of Records.

Amazing!!!

[StampMaster]

Shakuntala Devi is a great mathematician, she has authored a lot of books which I/we have studied in school and college. Someone from the competitive exam like CAT, UPSC etc can give us more insight.

[Vikram]

She was truly great. Heard and read about her.


Best-
Vikram

[brihacharan]

> Truely a remarkable persona & a wizard with numbers!
> Just goes to prove that the "Human Mind" is eons ahead of a computer!
> Thanks for reminding us xl_target....
> Many Happy Returns of the Day "Shankuntala Devi Ji".....
Briha

[essdee1972]

We were honoured to have the late Shakuntala Devi as a guest in our school...... almost 29 years ago. Thanks for the reminder, XL.