7 examples of famous savants with incredible talents

Imagine a person capable of memorizing a page of a book in 10 seconds, who is also capable of memorize 8,000 books by heart and memorize all the postal codes of a country as big as States United. He would have prodigious mental abilities, right?

Well, that person exists, and along with other people that we are going to talk about in this article, he has the savant syndrome (or the "wise" 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), visuals, mathematical calculations, mechanical and spatial abilities, etc.

• Related article: "Savant syndrome, people with superhuman cognitive abilities"

Examples of famous savants

Although there are surely many famous savants that we are going to leave for commenting, we will carry out a recapitulation of what are possibly the best known worldwide. We must clarify that only one savant woman is included in this list, since at the 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 possessed an immeasurable memory capacity that he allowed him to remember perfectly the almost 10,000 books he had read (it took him just an hour to memorize them), as well as to memorize all the maps of the United States in detail. Also, he could use each eye to read a different page. Paradoxically, he was a highly dependent person on others, as he was not capable of taking care of himself and needed the help of others for the basic activities of daily life.

As a curious fact, in 2004 NASA became interested in the case of Kim Peek and wanted to study the functioning of your brain and brain structure through the performance of MRIs magnetic. Finally, it was concluded that very possibly Peek she suffered from a strange X-linked genetic syndrome which is related to the macrocephaly and hypotonia. In 2009, Kim Peek passed away from a heart attack.

• Related article: "Meet Kim Peek: The Incredible Case Of The Man Who Could Memorize It All"

2. Daniel tammet

This Briton has become a famous savant due to his 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 memoir (Born on a Blue day) that he has Asperger's, epilepsy and synesthesia. This character holds the record in Europe for memorizing the number Pi, getting 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's Syndrome learned to read before he was 18 months old. He is known statewide for his musical gifts., both at the level of performance and in musical composition. Several albums of him have been released 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 possesses a great ability to draw urban or architectural landscapes and buildings with just having seen them once. According to Wiltshire, drawing has always been his preferred means of communication, since as a child he had difficulties in communicating (he was 3 years old and did not speak) and began to use the artistic medium to Express oneself.

On one occasion he accurately drew London's Old Town after flying over it by 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 Asperger syndrome Y He is considered "savant" due to his incredible gifts on a musical level.. 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 versatility at the musical level in all his precision. What's more, he has the ability to play more than 8,000 songs from memory thanks to his prodigious abilities. Currently, he performs several international tours, both alone and with his music group Goodnuf.

6. Temple grandin

This American woman is a psychologist, zoologist, ethologist and university professor at the University of Colorado. He has publicly acknowledged that he has Asperger Syndrome and has shared his subjective experience in this regard worldwide, always fighting for the rights of people with this syndrome. As in the case of Stephen Wiltshire, Oliver Sacks dedicated a chapter in that same book to the story of Temple Grandin, being one of the first first-person accounts of someone who had Asperger's Syndrome.

She has always worried about animal exploitation in the United States and the cruel killing methods used on American farms and ranches. She has worked to maximize animal welfare by devising ways to reduce pain and cruelty in the slaughter of animals for meat consumption, applying his prodigious abilities to redesign slaughterhouses and ranches.

7. Alonzo Clemons

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 be sold for $ 45,000.

Clemons can reproduce an animal in a clay sculpture in less than an hour just by seeing it once. At the same time, he also makes life-size sculptures, highlighting among them the versions of horses.