Stephen Wiltshire vs Daniel Tammet
Two savants, compared on what is actually documented: field, era, country and record. No invented numbers.
The record, side by side
| Stephen Wiltshire | Daniel Tammet | |
| Field | Science | Science |
| Sub-field | Astronomy | Biology |
| Born | 1974 | 1979 |
| Died | living / not documented | living / not documented |
| Country of birth | - | ENG |
| Star sign | Taurus | Aquarius |
Who they are
Stephen Wiltshire
In October 2005, a thirty-one-year-old autistic British artist was flown by helicopter over Tokyo. He did not speak during the flight. He stared at the city. He held a sketchpad. When the helicopter landed, he was asked, in a Tokyo gallery the following week, to begin drawing what he had seen. He drew, over the next several days, the entire Tokyo skyline — every building, in correct architectural detail, from a single forty-five-minute aerial observation. The drawing, when finished, measured ten metres long. It was, in technical terms, complete. Stephen Wiltshire had, by then, been…
Full biography of Stephen Wiltshire →
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 →
What they share
- Both are held here under Science.
- Near contemporaries - 5 years apart.
- Their lifetimes overlap.
Questions people ask
- Who came first, Stephen Wiltshire or Daniel Tammet?
- Stephen Wiltshire. Stephen Wiltshire was born in 1974, Daniel Tammet in 1979.
- What field is each of them in?
- Stephen Wiltshire is filed under Science (Astronomy). Daniel Tammet is filed under Science (Biology).
- Were they contemporaries?
- Yes - their lifetimes overlap.