Daniel Tammet – a man of genius
Baku, April 25 (AZERTAC). Daniel Tammet is a British writer with high-functioning autism and savant syndrome. His bestselling 2006 memoir Born On A Blue Day was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association.
Tammet`s second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was named one of France`s bestselling books of 2009 by L`Express magazine in its March 2010 edition.
Tammet is well-known for his unusually vivid and complex synesthesia. 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 watercolor painting of Pi.
PiTammet 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 can learn new languages very quickly. To prove this for a documentary film, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his Icelandic language instructor saying it was “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. 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 particularly likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Mänti has many features related to Finnish and Estonian, both of which are Finnic languages.
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