Can you suddenly become a math genius when you have no interest in math? It may sound like an urban legend, but it is actually possible. Meet a person who proves it can happen. His name is Jason Padgett. Today, he is considered a math genius. However, his obsession with math seems to have emerged after a coincidence.
Jason Padgett’s story began in 2002 when he was attacked by unknown people while returning from a party with his friends. After being hit on the head with a hard object and beaten to the point of coma, Jason suffered a serious concussion. After receiving treatment, his life changed dramatically.
Jason Padgett’s Story Changed by Fractal Geometry
When he came home from the hospital, Jason Padgett had a great fear of the outside world. So, for a long time, he isolated himself at home, meaning he didn’t want to see anyone. As he struggled with depression after the attack, interesting changes took place in his brain. First of all, he began to experience changes in his eyesight.
- How can you tell if a person is lying? Clues that can give away a lie
- The Xiaomi 12 Lite, which has not yet been unveiled, has been unboxed!
Jason now saw everything in pixels, as if he was watching an intermittent movie. Let’s try to understand what this means. In fact, when we watch a movie, we do indeed see a series of independent still pictures. But when the human brain sees more than 12 pictures in 1 second, it perceives them as moving. However, after Jason suffered a concussion as a result of the attack, he was unable to see these pictures in motion. Moreover, the same problem persisted in the real world.
Later, he began to search the internet to better understand the strange curves he was seeing. Finally, he came across fractal geometry in mathematics and the Mandelbrot set. These drawings impressed him so much that he started to draw his own fractals.
One day, when a professional mathematician received these drawings, the career of Jason Padgett, who was originally a salesman, changed. Jason, who combined all the shapes he saw with small line segments, started to study mathematics. He also took courses on number theory. Jason, who still makes many drawings, continues his studies on mathematics and physics in the United States.
Why was Jason Padgett’s world made up of geometric shapes and graphs?
He himself wondered the answer to this question. He eventually contacted Berit Brogaard, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Miami. After further discussions, Jason realized that he had synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which information that should stimulate only one of the senses stimulates several of them. In these people, the senses mix and merge. Hearing, touch, taste, sight, hearing are intertwined. This condition is also called combined sensation.
Accidental Genius
Jason Padgett is one of 40 people in the world with acquired savant syndrome. This is a condition in which great talents in math, art or music suddenly appear after a brain injury or illness. Turned into a genius by accident, Jason went back to school with the encouragement of a physicist he met, completed his education and later wrote his life story in the book Struck by Genius.
