7 Examples Of Famous Savants With Incredible Talents
Let’s imagine a person capable of memorizing a page of a book in 10 seconds, who is also capable of memorizing 8,000 books and memorizing all the zip codes of a country as large as the United States. He would have prodigious mental abilities, right?
Well, that person exists, and along with other people we are going to talk about in this article, he has savant syndrome (or the “savant” syndrome).
The famous savants we will see have extraordinary abilities or talents especially related to the overdevelopment of the right hemisphere: artistic abilities (music, painting, sculpture), visual abilities, mathematical calculations, mechanical and spatial abilities, etc.
Although there are surely many famous savants that we are going to leave aside to comment on, we will make a recapitulation of those that are possibly the best known worldwide We must clarify that only one savant woman is included in this list, since at an epidemiological level, women have this syndrome much less frequently.
1. Kim Peek
He is surely the most famous savant in the world, in fact, the film Rain Man was made in his memory to publicize the case. Kim Peek had an immeasurable memory capacity which allowed him to perfectly remember the almost 10,000 books he had read (it barely took an hour to memorize them), as well as memorize all the maps of the US in detail. Plus, she could use each eye to read a different page. Paradoxically, he was a person highly dependent on others, since he was not able to take care of himself and needed the help of others for basic activities of daily living.
As a curious fact, in 2004 NASA was interested in Kim Peek’s case and wanted to study the functioning of his brain and brain structure through magnetic resonance imaging. Finally, it was concluded that Peek very possibly He suffered from a rare genetic syndrome linked to the X chromosome which is related to macrocephaly and hypotonia. In 2009, Kim Peek died of a heart attack.
2. Daniel Tammet
This Briton has become a famous savant due to its great ability to learn multiple languages with amazing ease (he learned Icelandic in a single week and speaks 11 languages, including Spanish), as well as his ease in carrying out really complex mathematical calculations.
Tammet has acknowledged in his memoirs (Born on a Blue Day) that he has Asperger’s, epilepsy and synesthesia. This character He holds the record in Europe for memorizing the number Pi managing to recite some 22,514 digits in less than five hours.
As a curious fact, Daniel Tammet has created his own language, called “Manti”, similar to Finnish.
3. Matt Savage
This 25-year-old American boy with Asperger Syndrome learned to read before he was 18 months old. He is known nationwide for his musical talents, both at the level of execution and in musical composition. Several albums have been released by him solo and also as part of the Matt Savage Trio and he has appeared on multiple well-known American television shows, such as Late Show with David Letterman.
4. Stephen Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a renowned London artist who has a large ability to draw landscapes and urban or architectural buildings just having seen them once According to Wiltshire, drawing has always been his preferred means of communication, since as a child he had difficulties communicating (he was 3 years old and did not speak) and he began to use the artistic medium to express himself.
He once accurately drew Old London after flying over it in a helicopter. His work became so famous that even the famous writer Oliver Sacks wrote a chapter about him in one of his books: An anthropologist on Mars.
5. Tony Deblois
Tony Deblois was born blind in 1974, and began playing the piano at the young age of 2. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and He is considered a “savant” due to his incredible musical gifts Although he claims to be specialized in the musical genre of Jazz, he is capable of playing any type of music.
He knows how to play more than a dozen instruments, so he has great musical versatility in all its precision. Besides, It has the ability to play more than 8,000 songs from memory thanks to its prodigious capabilities. Currently, he makes several international tours, both alone and with his music group Goodnuf.
6. Temple Grandin
This North American woman is a psychologist, zoologist, ethologist and university professor at the University of Colorado. She has publicly acknowledged that she has Asperger’s Syndrome and has shared her subjective experience of it worldwide, always fighting for the rights of people with this syndrome. As in the case of Stephen Wiltshire, Oliver Sacks dedicated a chapter of that same book to the story of Temple Grandin, being one of the first first-person accounts from someone who had Asperger’s Syndrome
He has always been concerned about animal exploitation in the United States and the cruel death methods used on American farms and ranches. He has worked to maximize animal welfare by devising ways to reduce the pain and cruelty in the slaughter of animals for meat consumption, applying his prodigious abilities to re-design slaughterhouses and ranches.
As a child, Alonzo Clemons suffered a brain injury that affected his normal development, but he has an extraordinary ability to create highly detailed and precise animal sculptures. He is considered a great sculptor of animal figures which can sell for $45,000.
Clemons can reproduce an animal in a clay sculpture in less than an hour if he has only seen it once. At the same time, he also makes life-size sculptures, highlighting the versions of horses.
