The Savants Among US

One of my goals for 2026 was to get a library card and read more normal. I started that a couple days in the year and the first book I have been reading so far is Born on A Blue Day A Memoir by Daniel Tammet. This book takes us inside the mind of Daniel Tammet an Autistic Savant and a Genius. I call him a genius because the things he can do and how his mind works is something a lot of us can't come close to doing. In the book we start with his early days when he was born and diagnosed with epilepsy and seizures at a young age. There was a time when he was young in which he had a seizure that almost took his life but by the grace of God he was able to be taken to the hospital.

The seizures slowly stopped as he got older and Daniel and his parents were able to get a hold of it. Being a kid with Autism we fully experience his upbringing and the things he went through especially at school and how different he was from the other kids. Part of his Autism was not knowing how to formally express himself when it came to building relationships but at school he slowly excelled. There were moments and somethings in which he didn't understand but math was his forte. Daniel would see math equations and other things that had to do with numbers in the form of shapes and colors, and his mind would brilliantly sort them out. His love for math eventually led him to doing activities like playing chess in which he mastered and even competed nationally.

We are taken through his Asperger's and Savant syndrome as he gets older and slowly navigates the ups and downs of growing up. There are times in which he wouldn't fully understand statements made because part of the Autism was not fully understanding the different ways in which people expressed themselves whether by humor or other ways. Daniel when he was around the age of 18 signed up for a volunteer opportunity in Kaunas, Lithuania and was the first time he was alone on his own and the first time he left his hometown of East London. This was an amazing opportunity because we were introduced to his abilities to learn to function on his own and his ability to learn and master languages. Daniel took it upon himself to learn the Lithuanian language and became fluent in which he was able to speak to locals and the friends he made. One of the best parts of the book was when Daniel met another Savant Kim Peek.

Kim was known as a "mega savant". Kim had damage to the cerebellum as a kid and had a condition in which the connection of the two hemispheres of his brain were missing. He was diagnosed as mentally handicapped and the doctor said he had no mental capacity and would never walk. The amazing thing is the impact this had on his brain. He was able to memorize books by the age of 16 to 20 months. It was said he could speed through an entire book within an hour in which he would scan the left page with his left eye and read with his right. He was able to recall all the information in which he read and recalled items from over 12,000 books. Kim was the inspiration for the movie Rain Man in which his character was played by Dustin Hoffman.

There is a video on Youtube about what Daniel depicts in the book of him meeting Kim in which both Savants came together and talked about things like their love for books and was quizzing each other on things. Kim unfortunately died on December 19th, 2009, at the age of 58 from a heart attack but the best part of the video was at the end in which Kim told Daniel, "One Day You'll be As Great as I Am". Daniel also holds a record of counting PI from memory for over 5 hours. He was able to recite 22,514 numbers from memory. Daniel has written multiple books after Born on A Blue Day, and I could go more into his life, but I would recommend anyone to look up Daniel Tammet and Kim Peek on google and just soak in the amazement that will be discovered from the lives of these two. Check out Born on A Blue Day also for anyone interested.