Daniel Tammet
Daniel Tammet
Daniel Tammet FRSAis an English writer, essayist, translator, and autistic savant. His 2006 memoir, Born on a Blue Day, about his life with Asperger syndrome and savant syndrome, was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association Young Adult Library Services magazine. His second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was one of France's best-selling books of 2009. Thinking in Numbers, his third book, was published on 16 August 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton in...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth31 January 1979
years numbers long
One particular aspect of Siddhartha’s revelation of the outside world has always struck me. Quite possibly he lived his first thirty years without any knowledge of number. How must he have felt, then, to see crowds of people mingling in the streets? Before that day he would not have believed that so many people existed in all the world. And what wonder it must have been to discover flocks of birds, and piles of stones, leaves on trees and blades of grass! To suddenly realise that, his whole life long, he had been kept at arm’s length from multiplicity.
heart two space
I thought of the infinitely many points that can divide the space between two human hearts.
math emotional numbers
My algebra was relatively poor. I found it very difficult to use equations that substituted numbers - to which I had a synesthetic and emotional response - for letters, to which I had none. It was because of this that I decided not to continue math at Advanced level, but chose to study history, French and German instead.
years imagination records
When I achieved the European record for reciting pi in 2004, this captured the imagination of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen in Cambridge, and he finally diagnosed me with Asperger's that year.
motivation inspiration shapes
Aesthetic judgments, rather than abstract reasoning, guide and shape the process by which we all come to know what we know.
order legs ends
Even the greatest mathematicians, the ones that we would put into our mythology of great mathematicians, had to do a great deal of leg work in order to get to the solution in the end.
children book writing
I remember as a young child, during one of my frequent trips to the local library, spending hours looking at book after book trying in vain to find one that had my name on it. Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I’d assumed that one of them—somewhere—had to be mine. I didn’t understand at the time that a person’s name appears on a book because he or she wrote it. Now that I’m twenty-six I know better. If I were ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it.
inconsistent humans
I'm inconsistent because I'm human.
views circles ideas
Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.
office feelings style
I have tried to be more flexible, but I always end up feeling more uncomfortable. Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work.
years skills long
I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I've been practising it for so long over so many years I've almost lost my accent.
champion chess great-american
Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.'
book knows
I love books so much. I've read more books than anyone else I know.
aware brains change early fixed learn myth mythology people says
There is this mythology that says that when people are born, their brains are essentially fixed very early on and they're not able to change their connections. I was aware that was a myth and that people could learn new skills.