A Maths Wizard Who Outshone Shakuntala Devi!
“Pure Mathematics is, in its own way, the poetry of logical ideas”– Albert Einstein.
Among the many wonderful wonders India created in all these years here comes another 21 year old boy from the city of Hyderabad, Neelkanth Bhanu Prakash, B.Sc. Honours degree in Mathematics, a student from the prestigious St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. The Vice President, M. Venkaiah Naidu, congratulated the boy calling him, hash tag the “human calculator” for making the whole country extremely proud. Receiving the title of “World’s Fastest Human Calculator” for winning the first ever gold in Mental Calculation World Championship beating the Lebanese and UAE competitors in the finale.
The Mind Sports Olympics (MSO) which apparently is an annual international multi-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports, inaugurated at London in 1997. This year the tournament was held online on 15th August 2020 due to the current situation with the pandemic. 30 competitors from 13 countries that took part comprised of UK, UAE, Germany, France, Greece and Lebanon where our Wonder boy out-shined and vanquished his rivals with a margin of 65 points. Surprising the judges of the competition, who further asked him to perform more calculation to confirm his brilliant accuracy.
He holds 4 world records and 50 Limca records for being the fastest human calculator whose brain calculates quicker than the speed of an calculator. These records which were once held by the Guinness book record holder Scott Flangsburg, for speed in mental calculation who hosts National Counting Bee every year. Shakuntala devi or popularly known as a Human Computer she attained universal fame when she demonstrated her ability to multiply two random numbers of 13 digits in 28 seconds. Breaking down these records is a matter of pride for the nation.
Mr. Prakash dreams to remove the fear of Maths in students and also believes that , for any country to develop and thrive globally, numeracy is as important skill as literacy. Prakash said , his vision is to create “VISION Math” labs and reach out to millions of children to make them start loving Maths. According to this Maths prodigy ,MSO is equivalent to any other Olympic event in the realm of physical sports. He also won the International Abacus Champion ’13 and National Abacus Champion ’11 and 12.
India is proud of this young chap , who made a world record and is leading towards a goal that will definitely bring fewer boundaries, from approaching this subject and glory in making it one of the most liked. We wish the new Math Wizard all the best for a prosperous future in this field and also achieving greater lengths of success in life.
