Igor Shelushkov

Igor Alexeyevich Shelushkov (c. 1946 – ?) was a Soviet mental calculator. He mentally extracted roots of large numbers and calculated the number of syllables and characters in a given verse by listening. Shelushkov was featured in the 1968 Soviet popular science film Seven Steps Beyond the Horizon, where he mentally extracted the sixth root of a 12-digit number and the 77th root of another multi-digit number.[1] Shelushkov also competed with the Soviet third generation computer Mir. He extracted the 77th root of a 148-digit number in 18 seconds, while it took about 10 minutes to program the related operation for computer.[2]

Shelushkov was a postgraduate at Gorki Polytechnic Institute (now Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University). According to Shelushkov, he used the memorized logarithmic table for calculations.[2] His abilities were mentioned by Russian mathematician Vladimir Tvorogov, who attended one of his performances,[3] and by psychologist Artur Petrovsky. Shelushkov's subsequent fate is unclear.

References
  1. Эпизод из фильма "Семь шагов за горизонт" (1968) [An episode from the film Seven Steps Beyond the Horizon (1968)] (in Russian). YouTube. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
  2. Захарченко В. Д. Разговор с электрическим мозгом (in Russian). Lib.ru. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
  3. Дмитрий Писаренко. Стать гением может каждый, или Кто такие люди-счётчики?. Argumenty i Fakty (in Russian). Retrieved 23 April 2013.


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