Zerah Colburn vs Jacob Barnett
Two savants, compared on what is actually documented: field, era, country and record. No invented numbers.
The record, side by side
| Zerah Colburn | Jacob Barnett | |
| Field | Mathematics | Science |
| Sub-field | Mathematician | Physics |
| Born | 1804 | 1998 |
| Died | 1839 | living / not documented |
| Country of birth | - | - |
| Star sign | Virgo | Gemini |
Who they are
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 →
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 documented on this site with a verified biography.
Where they part
- Different fields: Mathematics for Zerah Colburn, Science for Jacob Barnett.
- 194 years separate their births (1804 and 1998).
- Their lifetimes never overlapped.
Questions people ask
- Who came first, Zerah Colburn or Jacob Barnett?
- Zerah Colburn. Zerah Colburn was born in 1804, Jacob Barnett in 1998.
- What field is each of them in?
- Zerah Colburn is filed under Mathematics (Mathematician). Jacob Barnett is filed under Science (Physics).
- Were they contemporaries?
- No - their lifetimes do not overlap.