Daniel Tammet

Daniel Paul Tammet, featured on ABC’s 20/20 episode “SuperHumans!”, seems to be just another regular 31 years old guy, but has gifts that many other people would not dare to dream of: his brain works with numbers like a supercomputer and has an incredible linguistic skill.
Tammet, eldest of the nine children of his family in England, suffers from one form of autism, a form of neurological disorder that impairs social interaction and often manifests repetitive and restricted behavior. Many of the autistic persons, though, have something in exchange: incredible skills in one or more matters. Several researchers speculate that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Isaac Newton, inventor Nikola Tesla and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick were autistic.

Tammet’s talent lays in the numbers. He can solve astronomical calculations incredibly fast – he says that he can visualize numbers with their unique shape, texture and color. Specialists call this syndrome synesthaesia, the mixture of different senses into one great sensory experience. He says: “I learned to count, like anyone else, at a young age, and when I did I would see colors. I would see pictures in my mind. I assumed at the time that everyone saw numbers as I did.”
Daniel Tammet has also an unusual linguistic skill. He can speak ten languages: English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Icelandic, Welsh, and Esperanto, plus one language he created, the Mänti, based on the Scandinavian languages.
The TV magazine “20/20″ has been broadcast on the TV channel ABC since 1978