![\"1103_devi_full_600\"](\"http:\/\/desihiphop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/1103_devi_full_600.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDevi, the magician of numbers and so-called \u201chuman calculator,\u201d is honored in a Google Doodle this afternoon. Ms. Devi, who died in April, would have been 84-years-old today. Devi was born in Bangalore, India on Nov. 4, 1929. Her father was a circus acrobat and, Like her father, Devi emerged as an adroit performer, but with a twist: her displays of cerebral somersaulting were, well, cerebral. There was nothing to see but Devi deliver the final answer, before the public had even managed to take that breath of anticipation \u2013 would she be able to answer? Would she get it right? Despite the invisibleness of her act, or perhaps because of it, her almost magical performances of computational adroitness held audience\u2019s un-yielding attention.<\/p>\n News soon spread that there was a young woman in India who had a brain so agile with dates and numbers and equations that it had to be seen to be believed. At six-years-old, she performed her numerical magic at The University of Mysore, in India. In the 1950s, she was invited to tour through Europe and the US. In the 1970s, she was invited back for the performances that, it would unfold, would put her in the history books.<\/p>\n [youtube id=”l0fXPzcbmPk” width=”600″ height=”350″]<\/p>\n In 1977, Devi appeared at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas, to extract before an audience the 23rd root of a 201-digit number. It took her 50 seconds. The Univac computer, set up as her competitor, took 62 seconds<\/a>, the New York Times reported.<\/p>\n <!\u2013\u2013nextpage\u2013\u2013><\/p>\n In 1980, at the Imperial College in London, Devi multiplied two 13-digit numbers in just 28 seconds, a record-breaking speed that was recorded in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records. The two numbers were 7,686,369,774,870 and 2,465,099,745,779; the answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. Her response time, less than half minute, included the time it took her to say out loud the answer.<a href=”http:\/\/desihiphop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/devi2.jpg”><\/a>upon finding that his daughter was at just three-years-old an obvious mathematical savant, soon began organizing road shows to showcase her unusual talent for numbers.<\/p>\nWatch This One-on-One Interview with Devi in China<\/h3>\n
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