Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Dropout Becomes Math Genius After Brutal Beating


from http://www.odditycentral.com/news/head-injury-turns-college-dropout-into-math-genius-with-a-beautiful-mind.html

Head Injury Turns College Dropout into Math Genius with a Beautiful Mind

Sometimes it takes a good, hard knock in the head to start seeing things right. In the case of Jason Padgett, he started to see more than just right. He began to see complex mathematical formulae everywhere he looked, after a head injury. For now, the 41-year-old works behind the counter of a futon store in Tacoma, Washington, but surely not for long. His genius is bound to lead him elsewhere in life.

Interestingly, for his level of intelligence Jason has no college degree, let alone a PhD. He doesn’t even have a background in math; just 10 years ago he was a very different person. Interested only in working out and partying, Jason had no idea his life was about to change forever as he walked out of a karaoke club in Tacoma. A group of muggers attacked and brutally assaulted him, kicking him several times in the head. “All I saw was a bright flash of light and the next thing I knew I was on my knees on the ground and I thought, ‘I’m going to get killed,’” he says. But he didn’t. Instead, he got the best gift he could ever hope for.

Escaping with a concussion, doctors said he would soon be all right. But within a couple of days, Jason was able to notice something remarkable. As a person who could never draw, he suddenly began to create intricate diagrams not even knowing what they were. Everywhere he looked, he could see mathematical formulae represented in the various shapes. “I see bits and pieces of the Pythagorean theorem everywhere. Every single little curve, every single little spiral, every tree is part of that equation.” The drawings he makes are known as fractals – “A shape that when you take apart into pieces, the pieces are the same or similar to the whole. So say I had 1,000 pictures of you that were little and I put all those little pictures of you in the right spot to make the exact same picture of you, but bigger,” he explains.


Jason is being described as “A Beautiful Mind” by the media, similar to the character John Nash played by Russell Crowe in the movie of the same name. Several researchers believe that he has stumbled upon an incredibly rare gift. He was even sent to Finland to go through a series of tests by Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist and philosophy professor at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St.Louis. The scan revealed that Jason’s brain was damaged, which led to overcompensation in certain areas. Most people don’t have access to these portions of the brain, but Jason does, explained Brogaard. As a result, he is now a savant – developed in a particular skill that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic. Brogaard says the skill is developed to such an extreme degree that it makes the person super human.


Jason Padgett

Tacoma, Wa - United States
Jason Padgett - Fine Artist
Jason Padgett - Fine Artist
Jason D. Padgett is a number theorist with Acquired Savant Syndrome from Anchorage Alaska, currently living in Tacoma Washinton. The beauty of numbers and their connection to the pure geometry of space time and the universe is shown in his fractal diagrams. Fractals are shapes that when decomposed into pieces, the pieces are the same or similar to the whole. His is currently studying how all fractals arise from limits and how E=MC2 is itself a fractal. When he first started drawing he had no traditional math training and could only draw what he saw as math. Eventually a physicist saw his drawings and helped him get traditional mathematics training to be able to describe in equations the complex geometry of his drawings. He is currently a student studying mathematics in Washington state where he is learning traditional mathematics so he can better describe what he sees in a more traditional form. Many of the captions were written before he had any traditional math training. His drawing of E=MC^2 is based on the structure of space time at the quantum level and is based on the concept that there is a physical limit to observation which is the Planck length. It shows how at the smallest level, the structure of space time is a fractal. He does his own fractal diagrams and can also create new ones by request. His price for originals depends on the difficulty of the fractal. So sit back and enjoy the beauty of naturally occuring mathematics in pure geometric form connecting E=MC2 (energy) to art. All are HAND DRAWN using only a pencil, ruler and compass. Please feel free to leave comments on your opinion of his work.
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Jason Padgett - Spiral Scalar
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