Savant

George Widener is a prodigious savant. Give him any date in history and he will tell you what day of the week it was. A remarkable talent of an autistic mind.

It’s not just brain impairment at birth that brings about savant skills. There’s powerful evidence that brain damage can trigger the release of hidden talents much later in life.

Kim Peek is probably the world’s most famous savant. Made famous by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; a confounding mix of disability and brilliance.

Kim Peek may be the greatest savant we have ever known, he is certainly the best known and more than entitled to be referred to as a mega-savant.

Tommy McHugh became an obsessive painter and poet after a massive brain haemorrhage. The accidental genius was created by a huge aneurysm.

For Tommy his horror story has a happy ending. He acquired his savant like ability through a near fatal trauma but he is, in his own slightly-crazy way, content.

Derek Paravicini is blind, autistic and musically brilliant. Considered to be a savant his skill is to be a pitch-perfect musical prodigy.

People compare Derek Paravicini with Art Tatum, the great, blind, jazz pianist from the early 20th century. His name is occasionally mis-spelt as Paraviccini.

Daniel Tammet exhibits stunning mental, mathematical abilities. His incredible brain can calculate mathematical problems with extraordinary accuracy.

Daniel sees numbers as shapes and colours. It is a rare talent and may indicate a form of autism.