This sounds like the premise of a superhero movie: A college dropout suffered a serious head injury after being mugged -- and came out a genius. 43-year-old Jason Padgett was knocked unconscious by two men in 2002 after leaving a karaoke bar near his home. At the time, he was a 31-year-old community college dropout and raising a daughter. He had absolutely NO interest in academics, let alone numbers -- unless it had something to do with his bar tab. Today, hes much different. Scientists say the damage he suffered after his attack forced his brain to overcompensate in areas most people arent able to access -- something called acquired savant syndrome. Now, hes able to see complex geometric shapes in everyday life. According to the New York Post, Padgett is one of a few people in the world who can draw approximations of fractals, the repeating geometric patterns that are building blocks of everything in the known universe, by hand. The Post also notes that, in Padgetts eyes, tree leaves outside his window are evidence of Pythagoras Theorem. The arc that light makes when it bounces off his car proves the power of Pi. He also told the Post that when he pours cream into his coffee, he watches the cream stirred into the brew. The perfect spiral is an important shape to me. Its a fractal. Suddenly, its not just my morning cup of joe, its geometry speaking to me. He eventually came to the conclusion that circles dont exist: ... the circle I saw was subdivided by light rays, and I realized each ray was really a representation of Pi. ... It was like a bomb went off in my mind. In a matter of minutes, I was no longer just a receiver of geometric imagery or a researcher; I was a theorist. There are only 40 people in the world with Padgetts condition.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 21:59:55 +0000