Indian Boy Becomes Fastest Human Calculator
Neelakanta Bhanu Prakash a 20-year-old from Hyderabad has been named the fastest human calculator.
Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is the most prestigious international competition for games of mental skill and mind sports. It is held annually in London. The MSO this year was held virtually and there were 30 participants. The participants were up to the age of 57 years from 13 countries including UK, UAE, Germany, Greece, France and Lebanon. On 15th August At the MSO’s Mental Calculation World Championship, Neelakanta Bhanu Prakash a 20 year old from Hyderabad, won the gold for India. The judges were blown away by his mental math calculations. He has been named the fastest human calculator in the world. This means Bhanu Prakash’s brain is capable of calculating quicker than the speed of a calculator.
Such a record was earlier held by Math maestros like Scott Flansburg and Shakuntala Dev. Recently a movie was made on the life of Shakuntala Devi in which Vidya Balan played the character of Shakuntala Devi. Neelakanta said he is very proud to have secured the gold medal for India for the first time. Neelakanta Bhanu Prakash is a student of Mathematics (Hons.) at Delhi University’s St Stephen College. He has many world records plus 50 Limca records for his fastest Mathematics calculations. He envisions creating “Vision Math” labs. These labs will reach out to millions of children and help them love maths. Neelakanta said that Numeracy is as important a skill as Literacy and he wants to eradicate math phobia. He hopes that he will inspire children to learn math in the future.
