Daniel Tammet vs Jacob Barnett
Two savants, compared on what is actually documented: field, era, country and record. No invented numbers.
The record, side by side
| Daniel Tammet | Jacob Barnett | |
| Field | Science | Science |
| Sub-field | Biology | Physics |
| Born | 1979 | 1998 |
| Died | living / not documented | living / not documented |
| Country of birth | ENG | - |
| Star sign | Aquarius | Gemini |
Who they are
Daniel Tammet
On 14 March 2004 — Pi Day — Daniel Tammet sat down in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford and began to recite. For five hours and nine minutes he spoke the digits of pi, one after another, while observers checked him against the printed value. He stopped at 22,514 digits, a European record. To Tammet it had not felt like recall in the ordinary sense. He was not retrieving a list. He was, he said, describing a landscape he could see — pi as a rolling sequence of shapes, colours and…
Full biography of Daniel Tammet →
Jacob Barnett
At two, Jacob Barnett stopped talking. He had been an unusually attentive infant — staring at patterns of light, fixated by repeating shapes — but the verbal regression that followed his second birthday was severe enough that his parents were told he might never speak again. The diagnosis was autism. He was eventually evaluated as having moderate to severe autism with associated learning impairment. By eleven, he was an undergraduate at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. By thirteen, he had completed a master's thesis in theoretical physics. By nineteen, he was a doctoral student at the…
Full biography of Jacob Barnett →
What they share
- Both are held here under Science.
- Their lifetimes overlap.
Where they part
- 19 years separate their births (1979 and 1998).
Questions people ask
- Who came first, Daniel Tammet or Jacob Barnett?
- Daniel Tammet. Daniel Tammet was born in 1979, Jacob Barnett in 1998.
- What field is each of them in?
- Daniel Tammet is filed under Science (Biology). Jacob Barnett is filed under Science (Physics).
- Were they contemporaries?
- Yes - their lifetimes overlap.