Stephen Wiltshire vs Zerah Colburn
Two savants, compared on what is actually documented: field, era, country and record. No invented numbers.
The record, side by side
| Stephen Wiltshire | Zerah Colburn | |
| Field | Science | Mathematics |
| Sub-field | Astronomy | Mathematician |
| Born | 1974 | 1804 |
| Died | living / not documented | 1839 |
| Country of birth | - | - |
| Star sign | Taurus | Virgo |
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 →
Zerah Colburn
In the winter of 1810, in a one-room farmhouse in Cabot, Vermont, a labourer named Abia Colburn overheard his six-year-old son chanting numbers by the fire. The boy — who had barely six weeks of schooling and whom the family had quietly assumed was slow — was reciting his multiplication tables. His father, half disbelieving, set him a problem: multiply 13 by 97. The child answered at once, and correctly. Within two years Zerah Colburn would be standing before audiences in London, extracting roots and naming the factors of large numbers faster than the mathematicians…
Full biography of Zerah Colburn →
What they share
- Both are documented on this site with a verified biography.
Where they part
- Different fields: Science for Stephen Wiltshire, Mathematics for Zerah Colburn.
- 170 years separate their births (1974 and 1804).
- Their lifetimes never overlapped.
Questions people ask
- Who came first, Stephen Wiltshire or Zerah Colburn?
- Zerah Colburn. Stephen Wiltshire was born in 1974, Zerah Colburn in 1804.
- What field is each of them in?
- Stephen Wiltshire is filed under Science (Astronomy). Zerah Colburn is filed under Mathematics (Mathematician).
- Were they contemporaries?
- No - their lifetimes do not overlap.