The legendary Shakuntala Devi, world’s fastest Human computer whose skills in mathematics earned her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records is no more.
Shakuntala Devi died of respiratory complications at a Bangalore hospital. It is remarkable that she had no formal education and picked up reading and writing from books. It is said that adding two 16 digit numbers and multiplying the result with another 16 digit number was done almost instantaneously. Then within the blink of the eye she would tell the cube root of the resultant.
The mathematics demonstration expert attributed her powers to divinity. Univac 1108 one of the fastest computers ever made rated her as one in 58 million for the way she computed without any other devices.
Shakuntala Devi was born in an orthodox Kannada Brahmin family on Nov 4 1929. She has written a lot of books. Astrology for you, Fun with Numbers and Puzzles to Puzzle you are some of the well known ones.
Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-A-God-s-gift–with-a-divine-quality-/1105728/
Raviera 