As India’s most remarkable mathematical prodigy, she had astounded friends and family with her numerical prowess since childhood. She once calculated the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in her head in less than a minute, and in June 1980, at Imperial College, London, accurately multiplied two random 13-digit numbers in a few seconds. 
 
 The sum, picked at random by the computer department, was 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779. After 28 seconds she correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730, a feat that earned her a place in the Guinness Book of Records. 
 
 Her ability to solve complicated arithmetical problems with apparent ease and astonishing speed had stunned observers since the 1970s, when her unexplained brain power made even sophisticated digital devices of the day seem inadequate by comparison. Witty and sharp-minded, she possessed exceptional powers of retention and appeared to harness the power of several mnemonic devices in her brain. 
 
 In 1988 she visited the United States, where the educational psychologist Professor Arthur Jensen tried to unlock the secret of her abilities. At Stanford University he monitored her performance in several mathematical tasks involving large numbers and subjected her to a series of tests. 
 
 When volunteers wrote problems on a blackboard, Shakuntala Devi would turn around, stare at the problem and come up with the right answer, always in less than a minute. According to Jensen, in a research study published in the journal Intelligence in 1990: “Devi solved most of the problems faster than I was able to copy them in my notebook.” 
 
 Jensen set her two problems, the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375. Shakuntala Devi gave the correct answers — 395 and 15 — even before Jensen’s wife could start the stopwatch. 
 
 The study explored whether Shakuntala Devi’s feats derived from some innate ability to manipulate large numbers or from practice. Her reaction times on simple cognitive tasks such as picking the odd man out were unexceptional, and contrasted sharply with her speed at arithmetical calculations. 
 
 Jensen suggested that she perceived large numbers differently from others. “For a calculating prodigy like Devi, the manipulation of numbers is apparently like a native language, whereas for most of us, arithmetic calculation is at best like the foreign language we learnt at school,” he wrote. He believed that some “motivational factor” that drives and sustains “enormous and prolonged interest and practice” might explain her extreme levels of skill. 
 
 Shakuntala Devi was born on November 4 1929 in Bangalore into an orthodox Brahmin family. Her father, refusing to follow the family priestly tradition, became a circus performer, excelling in trapeze, tightrope, lion taming and human cannonball acts. 
 
 When she was three, Shakuntala began exhibiting precocious skill with numbers, and by the time she was five, could calculate cube roots. A year later she amazed mathematicians at Mysore University with her ability to solve complex mathematical problems in her head. But she had no conventional schooling, mainly on account of her father’s travels with the circus, and even went short of food. 
 
 She claimed to have joined a convent at the age of 10, but to have been expelled within three months because her parents were unable to pay the fees. 
 
 While growing up in a run-down area of Bangalore, Shakuntala was able to retain large numbers of digits in her memory. This singular talent came to wider attention when she beat one of the world’s fastest computers by 10 seconds in a complicated calculation. 
 
 “Numbers have life, they’re not just symbols on paper,” she once said. “I cannot transfer my abilities to anyone, but I can think of quicker ways with which to help people develop numerical aptitude.” 
 
 A daughter survives her. 
 
 Shakuntala Devi, born November 4 1929, died April 20 2013 ||||| Shakuntala Devi, an Indian mathematical wizard known as “the human computer” for her ability to make incredibly swift calculations, died on Sunday in Bangalore, India. She was 83. 
 
 The cause was respiratory and cardiac problems, said D. C. Shivadev, a trustee of the Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust. 
 
 Ms. Devi demonstrated her mathematical gifts around the world, at colleges, in theaters and on radio and television. In 1977, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating a Univac computer, which took 62 seconds.
– It's unlikely that the name of an Indian woman who died on Sunday will mean anything to you, but her nickname is sure to resonate. Shakuntala Devi, aka the "human computer," died at the age of 83 in Bangalore, leaving behind a legacy of jaw-dropping computational genius. Her colorful story begins at age three, when her lion-tamer father discovered her prodigious talent for memorizing numbers. Major public performances began at the age of six, taking her from what she once described to the Times of India as the semi-slums to locations around the world. Among her feats, as also recounted by the New York Times and the Telegraph: 1977: She extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds; a Univac computer tasked with performing the same calculation did so in 62 seconds. 1980: She entered the Guinness Book of World Records after multiplying two 13-digit numbers—and voicing the 26-digit solution—in a total of 28 seconds. She famously gave answers (once on the BBC, another time at the University of Rome) that were different from the ones the interviewers had; she was correct on both occasions. An American researcher who studied her abilities asked her to find the the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375. She did so before his wife was even able to start a stopwatch.