Daniel Tammet — English Writer born on January 31, 1979,

Daniel Tammet FRSA is an English writer, essayist, translator, and autistic savant. His 2006 memoir, Born on a Blue Day, about his life with Asperger syndrome and savant syndrome, was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association Young Adult Library Services magazine. His second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was one of France's best-selling books of 2009.Thinking in Numbers, his third book, was published on 16 August 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom and on 30 July 2013 by Little, Brown and Company in the United States and Canada. His books have been published in 20 languages. He was elected in 2012 to serve as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts... (wikipedia)

There are always things I find difficult - being in crowds, remembering faces. I do like routines. I always travel with someone. My life in Avignon is a very quiet one. I have an apartment that looks over the whole city. I can drop into town, but a lot of the time I write from home. In some respects I still live a very quiet, simple life.
Every culture has contributed to maths just as it has contributed to literature. It's a universal language; numbers belong to everyone.
Life is going to be complex, and the only way we're able navigate our way through it at all is by living as best we can and absorbing those experiences and somehow making intuitive responses in future situations that resemble them in some way.
When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think.
I know from my own experience that there is much more to 'intelligence' than an IQ number. In fact, I hesitate to believe that any system could really reflect the complexity and uniqueness of one person's mind, or meaningfully describe the nature of his or her potential.