AUTISTIC SAVANT UNEXPLAINED GENIUS: AUTISTIC SAVANTS: MEMORIZE A PHONE BOOK FOR FUN

---

Autistic savants are members of a rare group. People who have autism and yet have certain remarkable almost unbelievable savant mental abilities that seem to be far beyond the ken of others.Thus autistic savant. Rain Man the movie happened because the screen writer Barry Morrow met Kim Peek in 1984. Morrow could not forget Peek."Considered an expert in about 15 subjects, Peek can instantly recall information ranging from sports and movie trivia to geography and history facts. He reads a book by using one eye to read one page and the other to read the other page and he remembers 95 percent of the information years after reading the book once".











Savant skills include:

Music - the piano is the most popular instrument. For example, the skill may be the ability to play the piano without being taught.

Art - such as the ability to draw, paint or sculpt to high standards. For example, Richard Wawro is an autistic savant who is also blind, but his crayon drawings command up to $10,000 each.

Mathematics - for example, the ability to work out complicated sums in their head, or to calendar calculate (for example, work out what day it was on 1 June 1732).

Language - in rare cases, the person may be unusually gifted in languages.

Other skills - such as knowing the time without seeing a clock, untaught mechanical skills, having an unfailing sense of direction or the ability to commit maps to memory.

A Movie About A Concert Pianist Who Goes Deaf Uncovers a Genius

One Sunday night in the 1960's a rural Wisconsin family living on the edge of Lake Pewaukee sat down to watch a film. The film, "Sincerely Yours" starred Liberace "as a famed pianist who, on the night of his big concert at Carnegie Hall, goes deaf". The film deals with the eventual triumph of Liberace over his deafness. In one of those ironies of life, little did the film's producers realize that "Sincerely Yours"would uncover of a real medical miracle.



The rural Wisconsin family had, that Sunday night, apparently thoroughly enjoyed the cinematic tear jerker and had gone to sleep. Sometime in the early hours of Monday, the mother of the family was awakened by the sound of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1. Thinking that she had somehow inadvertently left the TV on, she went to turn it off. As she came in to turn off the TV she was startled to find that the music was not from the TV at all but it was her son Leslie playing the piano. Quite remarkable when you think about it. Here was a boy of 14 who had never taken piano lessons and couldn't read music playing a classic music piece flawlessly. Pretty amazing! But even more so because it turns out that Leslie Lemke, that 14 year old boy, had never even seen a piano because he has been blind and had brain damage since he was a baby. According to an article in the Duluth News Tribune, Lemke who gave a concert in October, 2003 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center has "cerebral palsy, blindness and only minimal cognitive abilities"


Lemke Plays Sincerely Yours..Click the arrow to begin








Alonzo Clemons is another person with incredible skills."As a child, Alonzo Clemons demonstrated the uncanny ability to mold clay into amazingly detailed animal figures he had never even seen. It was talent that only a genius could possess. But it was puzzling: Alonzo couldn't even feed himself or tie his shoes."
"Alonzo can see a fleeting image on a television screen of any animal, and in less than 20 minutes sculpt a perfect replica of that animal in three-dimensional accuracy."

Genius Among Us: Alonzo Clemons



Click the arrow to begin





Dustin Hoffman met several savants while he was preparing for his role in Rain Man, among them Kim Peek, "a walking encyclopedia..who can recite the highways that go to each American city, town or county, along with the area and zip codes, television stations and telephone networks that serve them."



Watch Kim Peek The Real Rain Man
Click the arrow to begin

Kim Peek and Fran Peek: “I am important to know you” (pdf file)

Real 'Rain Man' Touches Hearts in Butler

NASA Scientists Taking a Peek at Utahn's Brain

NASA Studying 'Rain Man's' Brain

Daniel Tammet is a different autistic savant. Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. He can explain what he does and how he does it. In 2006, Tammet traveled to the United States to promote his memoir, Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant.

A genius explains