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Two papers concerning the mathematical savant Jacques Inaudi: (1) Darboux. Memoires Presentes (in regards to Jacques Inaudi), Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l Académie des Sciences vol 114, no. 6, pp 255-316, with the Darboux a short note on pg 275. : 1329 1335. __+__ (2) J.M. Charcot, Rapport de la commission chargée de l examen du calculateur Inaudi Comptes Rendus. 1892, vol 114: 1329 1335. Both weekly issues, removed from a larger bound volume. __+__ Ultimately, this research would lead the Academy of Sciences (1892) to Jacques Inaudi (1867 1950), the study of whom had important theoretical implications for questions concerning the unity of memory, neuroanatomical localization of memory and calculation, and the heredity of expertise in memory and calculation. At different times, both Paul Broca (1824 1880) and Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 1893) studied Inaudi, though the two came to very different conclusions. Broca (1880) offered a new psychological hypothesis: The faculty for mental calculation is attributable not to a special organ, as had been proposed in the phrenological hypothesis, but more simply to extraordinary memory for numbers. He was also the first to identify the importance of memory in mental calculation, noting that Inaudi did not make use of visual images. Charcot (1892), by contrast, adopted the viewpoint of a neurologist, noting that Inaudi s skull was plagiocephalic and featured slight protrusions of the right frontal eminence and left parietal eminence. He sought to develop a psycho-physiological explanation for the Inaudi case but was hesitant to argue for the neuroanatomical localization of calculation and memory for numbers. -- Broca and Charcot's Research on Jacques Inaudi: The Psychological and Anthropological Study of a Mental Calculator , Serge Nicolas, Alessandro Guida, Zachary Levine, April, 2014, Journal of the history of the neurosciences.__+__ When he arrived in Paris, he could neither read nor write and did not know a single figure. He had been unable to make an addition with a pencil. However, he gave almost instantaneously the solution to the most complicated problem. He was asked, for example, how many minutes have elapsed since the birth of Jesus Christ, or what the population would be if the dead from the past ten centuries were resurrected, or the square root of a number of twelve digits, and he gave the response accurately and in two or three minutes - while amusing himself with another activity. The other day, at the Institute, Mr Darboux wrote the two numbers: 4.123.547.238.445.523.831 1.248.126.138.234.129.310 on the other, and, after having stated the figures, requested that the calculator make the subtraction. Inaudi repeats the problem from memory, because he does not see the written figures behind him. "Is that right?" said he. One answers: "Yes." A smile passes on his lips: "I have the proof", says he, blinking his eyes, and, immediately, announces the correct solution. Mr. Darboux asks him another question: "What is the number whose cube and square sum to 3,600?". Less than two minutes later, Inaudi answers: "It is the number 15." After some other tests, covering a plethora of figures, Jacques Inaudi announces to the Academy that he can speak and calculate at the same time and perform two calculations at once. The following test takes place. Mr Poincare proposes to the calculator the following problem: "4,801 divided by the square root of 6". Mr. Bertrand raises, at the same time, the following question: "What day of the week was on 11 March 1822?" Inaudi answers immediately: "11 March 1822 was a Monday. A person born this day would have lived for so many hours, minutes, seconds." (All these figures were recognised as exact.) The result of the operation proposed by Mr Poincare is the number 1,960. --Camille Flammarion, (1892): Jacques Inaudi. L illustration 50: 154 155.
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