10 years ago Jason Padgett, an American college drop-out, was left with rather an unusual concussion after he was attacked outside a karaoke club.
The damage inflicted on Mr Padgett's brain has left him with a 'remarkable gift' for figures, much like the legendary mathematician John Nash. Now, wherever he looks, he sees mathematical formulas and turns them into intricate and accurate fractal diagrams which he draws by hand. 'I see bits and pieces of the Pythagorean theorem everywhere,' he says. 'Every single little curve, every single spiral, every tree is part of that equation.'
Mr Padgett explains 'I’m obsessed with numbers, geometry specifically. I literally dream about it. There’s not a moment that I can’t see it, and it just doesn’t turn off.'
He is a walking medical mystery that experts around the world are still trying to understand.
He does not have a PhD, a degree or even a previous interest in maths, and he is the only person in the world known to have this skill which experts believe was caused by his head injuries. Before the attack he could not even draw. He admits he was the worst in his family at Pictionary.
The attack happened ten years ago, with his assailants kicking him in the head repeatedly. He was initially diagnosed with concussion, but a few days later, Mr Padgett began to notice something incredible. Overlaid over the normal world he could now see geometric patterns “Suddenly these patterns were obvious and they were everywhere” he explains.
“From trees to people to skin to paper, no matter what it is they’re following these specific geometric patterns which I now know are fractals.” He became obsessed with reproducing these patterns as intricate diagrams, also called fractals. He didn’t know what these diagrams were but he knew instinctively that they were important.
He says: 'A fractal is a shape that when you take the shape a part into pieces, the pieces are the same or similar to the whole.’
Fractals have always had to be created using specialist software, but somehow Mr Padgett can produce them by hand. This is technically impossible, as a genuine fractal contains literally infinite complexity no matter how much you magnify them, however he is able to draw them accurately by hand to various impressive levels of magnification, which he simply should not be able to do.
Like Nash, played by Russell Crowe in the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, researchers believe Mr Padgett has an exceptional gift.
To try and understand how his remarkable brain works, neuroscientist and philosophy professor Berit Brogaard and her team flew Mr Padgett to Finland to run a series of tests.
A scan showed damage that was forcing his brain to overcompensate in certain areas that most people do not have access to. During the tests, two specific areas of his brain lit up - the areas which control maths and mental imagery.
Prof Brogaard explains the results show that Mr Padgett is now an ‘acquired savant’, meaning brilliant in a specific area.
'Savant syndrome is the
development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or
autistic, that develops to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person
superhuman,' the professor added.
When asked if he thought his talent was a burden or a gift, he said it was a mixture of both.
'Sometimes I would really like to turn it off, and it won’t,' he said.
'But the good far outweighs the bad. I would not give it up for anything” Incredibly he says his daughter has had to wake him up from a nap before because he was counting out prime numbers in his sleep.
Mr Padgett admits “I was one of those kids who said maths was stupid” and he could never have predicted that he would develop this deep love of maths and geometry.
What is amazing is not just that he has this unbelievable skill, but that he feels a strong need to share it with others. It is as if a veil has been drawn back, he has gained access to a tangible representation of the physical world of maths, with all its beauty and intricacy and he is desperate to share that with the rest of us.
Mr Padgett sells his very sought
after fractal drawings online, and is also now studying traditional mathematics
at Washington state college so he can better describe what he sees in a more
conventional form and accurately describe in equations the complex geometry of
his drawings. He has also
advanced the fields of math and physics with his intuitive understanding of
fractals. He has even discovered that Einstein's E=mc² can also be expressed as
a fractal.
He says his ultimate goal now is to learn enough so that he can get into the
classroom and teach young people what he has learned - that maths is as
beautiful and natural as the world around us. In fact, maths is the
world around us, and Mr Padgett’s ‘super power’ is proof of that.
For a good look at Mr Padgett’s incredible drawing click here http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jason-padgett.html
