Kim Peak is a living computer. Who was the prototype of "Rain Man Kim Peak Reading Technique"
, Salt Lake City, USA) - an American with a phenomenal memory, remembered up to 98% of the information he read, for which he received the nickname “Kim-pewter”, the prototype of Dustin Hoffman’s hero in the film “Rain Man” (1988, USA).
Biography
Gradually, a circle of individual topics was formed that interested Kim primarily: world and American history, sports, cinema, geography, space exploration, the Bible, church history, literature and classical music. He knew all the area codes and zip codes in the United States, and the names of all the local television stations in the country. He kept maps of all American cities in his head and could give recommendations on how to get through any of them. He was familiar with hundreds of classical musical works, he could tell where and when each of them was written and first performed, he named the composer and various details of his life. He could spend hours talking about the peculiarities of the musical form and tonality of the works of certain composers and guess the authorship of works unknown to him.
Kim developed a special reading technique. In total, it took about 8-10 seconds to read one standard book spread, and he did not care how the text was located relative to himself. By the end of his life, Kim retained in his memory the contents of about 12 thousand previously read books.
At the same time, Kim suffered from many serious disorders, which to some extent is inherent in all people with gifted syndrome. He had a strange gait, Pieck learned to walk only at the age of four, and had very low muscle tone. He could hardly perform actions to satisfy the most common household and personal needs (for example, he could not button his shirt on his own), which was most likely due to damage to the cerebellum, which normally regulates motor activity. Kim was practically incapable of abstract thinking (in particular, he could not explain the meaning of proverbs and sayings), but at the same time he perfectly understood the meaning of information and could creatively operate with it, and was witty, which is uncharacteristic for people with such a giftedness syndrome.
To the amazement of scientists, his abilities increased with age. Despite his physical disability, he learned to play the piano in 2002. He played mainly from memory, and could transfer parts of various instruments onto the piano.
The famous Mozart researcher, Greenan, shared her observations:
Kim's knowledge of music is quite significant. It is amazing that he remembers every stroke even of those works that he heard only once, moreover, more than 40 years ago. His observations on the interconnections of musical works, biographical facts from the lives of composers, historical events, film tunes and thousands of other details reveal the scope of his intellectual abilities.
Original text(English)
Kim's knowledge of music is significant. His ability to recall every detail of a composition he has heard-in many cases only once and more than 40 years ago-is astonishing. The connections he draws between and weaves through compositions, composer’s lives, historical events, movie soundtracks and thousands of facts stored in his database reveal enormous intellectual capacity.
Movie hero
The success of the film “Rain Man” had a positive impact on Peak’s fate: he received a lot of offers to participate in various events. This had a positive effect on Kim's self-confidence. Barry Morrow allowed Peake to take his Oscar statuette with him to all these events. Later, this figurine began to be called “The Most Favorite Oscar Figurine”, because more people managed to hold it than any other copy of this well-known film award. He made friends, traveled a lot around the world, demonstrating his abilities. According to Fran Peak, over the last 21 years of his life, Kim flew over 3 million miles (about 5 million kilometers) and spoke with 64 million people. Moreover, immediately after gaining fame and 20 years after the first request, Kim was granted a certificate of education.
Experts have always noted that Kim has no signs of autism. Although autism itself is often associated with the syndrome of phenomenal abilities, Kim did not suffer from it and was always an open and approachable person.
See also
- Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky, owner of a phenomenal memory, professional mnemonist
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Excerpt characterizing Peak, Kim
The stars, as if knowing that now no one would see them, played out in the black sky. Now flaring up, now extinguishing, now shuddering, they busily whispered among themselves about something joyful, but mysterious.X
The French troops gradually melted away in a mathematically correct progression. And that crossing of the Berezina, about which so much has been written, was only one of the intermediate stages in the destruction of the French army, and not at all a decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been and is being written about the Berezina, then on the part of the French this happened only because on the broken Berezina Bridge, the disasters that the French army had previously suffered evenly here suddenly grouped together at one moment and into one tragic spectacle that remained in everyone’s memory. On the Russian side, they talked and wrote so much about the Berezina only because, far from the theater of war, in St. Petersburg, a plan was drawn up (by Pfuel) to capture Napoleon in a strategic trap on the Berezina River. Everyone was convinced that everything would actually happen exactly as planned, and therefore insisted that it was the Berezina crossing that destroyed the French. In essence, the results of the Berezinsky crossing were much less disastrous for the French in terms of the loss of guns and prisoners than Krasnoe, as the figures show.
The only significance of the Berezin crossing is that this crossing obviously and undoubtedly proved the falsity of all plans for cutting off and the justice of the only possible course of action demanded by both Kutuzov and all the troops (mass) - only following the enemy. The crowd of Frenchmen fled with an ever-increasing force of speed, with all their energy directed towards achieving their goal. She ran like a wounded animal, and she could not get in the way. This was proven not so much by the construction of the crossing as by the traffic on the bridges. When the bridges were broken, unarmed soldiers, Moscow residents, women and children who were in the French convoy - all, under the influence of the force of inertia, did not give up, but ran forward into the boats, into the frozen water.
This aspiration was reasonable. The situation of both those fleeing and those pursuing was equally bad. Remaining with his own, each in distress hoped for the help of a comrade, for a certain place he occupied among his own. Having given himself over to the Russians, he was in the same position of distress, but he became at a lower level in the section of satisfying the needs of life. The French did not need to have correct information that half of the prisoners, with whom they did not know what to do, despite all the Russians’ desire to save them, died from cold and hunger; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate Russian commanders and hunters of the French, the French in Russian service could not do anything for the prisoners. The French were destroyed by the disaster in which the Russian army was located. It was impossible to take away bread and clothing from hungry, necessary soldiers in order to give it to the French who were not harmful, not hated, not guilty, but simply unnecessary. Some did; but this was only an exception.
Behind was certain death; there was hope ahead. The ships were burned; there was no other salvation but a collective flight, and all the forces of the French were directed towards this collective flight.
The further the French fled, the more pitiful their remnants were, especially after the Berezina, on which, as a result of the St. Petersburg plan, special hopes were pinned, the more the passions of the Russian commanders flared up, blaming each other and especially Kutuzov. Believing that the failure of the Berezinsky Petersburg plan would be attributed to him, dissatisfaction with him, contempt for him and ridicule of him were expressed more and more strongly. Teasing and contempt, of course, were expressed in a respectful form, in a form in which Kutuzov could not even ask what and for what he was accused. They didn't talk to him seriously; reporting to him and asking his permission, they pretended to perform a sad ritual, and behind his back they winked and tried to deceive him at every step.
All these people, precisely because they could not understand him, recognized that there was no point in talking to the old man; that he would never understand the full depth of their plans; that he would answer with his phrases (it seemed to them that these were just phrases) about the golden bridge, that you cannot come abroad with a crowd of vagabonds, etc. They had already heard all this from him. And everything he said: for example, that we had to wait for food, that people were without boots, it was all so simple, and everything they offered was so complex and clever that it was obvious to them that he was stupid and old, but they were not powerful, brilliant commanders.
Especially after the joining of the armies of the brilliant admiral and the hero of St. Petersburg, Wittgenstein, this mood and staff gossip reached its highest limits. Kutuzov saw this and, sighing, just shrugged his shoulders. Only once, after the Berezina, he became angry and wrote the following letter to Bennigsen, who reported separately to the sovereign:
“Due to your painful seizures, please, Your Excellency, upon receipt of this, go to Kaluga, where you await further orders and assignments from His Imperial Majesty.”
But after Bennigsen was sent away, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich came to the army, who made the beginning of the campaign and was removed from the army by Kutuzov. Now the Grand Duke, having arrived at the army, informed Kutuzov about the displeasure of the sovereign emperor for the weak successes of our troops and for the slowness of movement. The Emperor himself intended to arrive at the army the other day.
An old man, as experienced in court affairs as in military affairs, that Kutuzov, who in August of the same year was chosen commander-in-chief against the will of the sovereign, the one who removed the heir and the Grand Duke from the army, the one who, with his power, in opposition the will of the sovereign, ordered the abandonment of Moscow, this Kutuzov now immediately realized that his time was over, that his role had been played and that he no longer had this imaginary power. And he understood this not just from court relationships. On the one hand, he saw that military affairs, the one in which he played his role, was over, and he felt that his calling had been fulfilled. On the other hand, at the same time he began to feel physical fatigue in his old body and the need for physical rest.
On November 29, Kutuzov entered Vilna - his good Vilna, as he said. Kutuzov was governor of Vilna twice during his service. In the rich, surviving Vilna, in addition to the comforts of life that he had been deprived of for so long, Kutuzov found old friends and memories. And he, suddenly turning away from all military and state concerns, plunged into a smooth, familiar life as much as he was given peace by the passions seething around him, as if everything that was happening now and was about to happen in the historical world did not concern him at all.
Chichagov, one of the most passionate cutters and overturners, Chichagov, who wanted to first make a diversion to Greece, and then to Warsaw, but did not want to go where he was ordered, Chichagov, known for his courage in speaking with the sovereign, Chichagov, who considered Kutuzov benefited himself, because when he was sent in the 11th year to conclude peace with Turkey in addition to Kutuzov, he, making sure that peace had already been concluded, admitted to the sovereign that the merit of concluding peace belonged to Kutuzov; This Chichagov was the first to meet Kutuzov in Vilna at the castle where Kutuzov was supposed to stay. Chichagov in a naval uniform, with a dirk, holding his cap under his arm, gave Kutuzov his drill report and the keys to the city. That contemptuously respectful attitude of the youth towards the old man who had lost his mind was expressed to the highest degree in the entire address of Chichagov, who already knew the charges leveled against Kutuzov.
While talking with Chichagov, Kutuzov, among other things, told him that the carriages with dishes captured from him in Borisov were intact and would be returned to him.
- C"est pour me dire que je n"ai pas sur quoi manger... Je puis au contraire vous fournir de tout dans le cas meme ou vous voudriez donner des diners, [You want to tell me that I have nothing to eat. On the contrary, I can serve you all, even if you wanted to give dinners.] - Chichagov said, flushing, with every word he wanted to prove that he was right and therefore assumed that Kutuzov was preoccupied with this very thing. Kutuzov smiled his thin, penetrating smile and, shrugging his shoulders, answered: “Ce n"est que pour vous dire ce que je vous dis. [I want to say only what I say.]
In Vilna, Kutuzov, contrary to the will of the sovereign, stopped most of the troops. Kutuzov, as his close associates said, had become unusually depressed and physically weakened during his stay in Vilna. He was reluctant to deal with the affairs of the army, leaving everything to his generals and, while waiting for the sovereign, indulged in an absent-minded life.
Having left St. Petersburg with his retinue - Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonsky, Arakcheev and others, on December 7, the sovereign arrived in Vilna on December 11 and drove straight up to the castle in a road sleigh. At the castle, despite the severe frost, stood about a hundred generals and staff officers in full dress uniform and the honor guard of the Semenovsky regiment.
The courier, who galloped up to the castle in a sweaty troika, ahead of the sovereign, shouted: “He’s coming!” Konovnitsyn rushed into the hallway to report to Kutuzov, who was waiting in a small Swiss room.
A minute later, the thick, large figure of an old man, in full dress uniform, with all the regalia covering his chest, and his belly pulled up by a scarf, pumping, came out onto the porch. Kutuzov put his hat on the front, picked up his gloves and sideways, stepping down the steps with difficulty, stepped down and took in his hand the report prepared for submission to the sovereign.
"Rain Man"- that was the name of the film by American director Barry Levinson, the main character of which was an eccentric autistic genius named Raymond. But few know that the hero of the popular picture had a real prototype named Kim Peek, who amazed those around him with his unique abilities.
Living computer
Kim knew the Encyclopedia Britannica, train and plane schedules around the world by heart. A road atlas, a calendar for two thousand years, and biographies of all his favorite composers and writers easily fit into his head.
This man could easily quote thousands of poems and prose pages, it was not difficult for him to multiply four-digit numbers in his head, his brain was as if equipped with a computer and a powerful search engine that made it possible to easily retrieve the necessary information.
But the genius never learned to brush his teeth, get dressed, tie his shoes, relieve himself, shop in supermarkets or cook food.
In these everyday questions, he - an adult American named Kim Peek - resembled a two-year-old child. He was poorly oriented in space, was terrified of the street and strangers, held on to his parents all the time, and therefore gave the impression of an absolutely helpless person and aroused the pity of those around him.
This is exactly how he appeared before the venerable American screenwriter Barry Morrow, who had a dozen excellent films under his belt. The owner of a phenomenal memory and other unique abilities, Kim Peak made such a strong impression on the master of the pen that in a month he wrote the script for the film “Rain Man,” directed by Barry Levinson.
The screenwriter did not hide the fact that he borrowed many of the main character’s features from Kim. To better study the behavior and habits of his hero, he simply moved into the Peaks' house, which allowed him to create an interesting and memorable image of Raymond. Dustin Hoffman shone in this role, and Tom Cruise portrayed his pragmatic brother Charlie on screen. The brothers' extraordinary adventures helped them get to know each other and feel a touching sense of kinship.
The name of the film comes from the similarity of the pronunciation of the name Raymond (Raymond) and the phrase rain man (“rain man”). Charlie remembered that as a child, when he was scared, the mysterious “rain man” came to him and sang songs to him, calming him down and lulling him to sleep. Having gotten to know his brother better, Charlie realized that it was Raymond, who, vaguely saying his name, turned into a wonderful “rain man” in his memories.
Genius Savant
After the huge success of the film and the cascade of film awards that fell on the creators of the film, Mr. Peak also gained worldwide fame.
Fame miraculously changed the character of the savant (from the French savant - “expert”, “scientist”). This is how people with brain abnormalities and phenomenal abilities are called. Fame made Mr. Peak a media star. Journalists devoted hundreds of articles to him, calling Kim a “brilliant savant.” TV producers invited him to numerous talk shows, and students wanted to see him in their classrooms.
And a miracle happened: Kim lost his shyness, became sociable, gained self-confidence, and enjoyed appearing in a variety of places. When passers-by stopped him on the street and asked questions, Kim willingly answered them, never refused an autograph to anyone, while demonstrating a subtle sense of humor.
The genius did not resist the desire of specialists to study his brain and understand how he could absorb and store such a volume of information. Doctors came to the conclusion that Kim's brain is structured differently from the vast majority of normal people. In particular, the tomograph recorded the absence of the corpus callosum (a powerful bundle of nerve fibers), which ensures communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Such a defect is extremely rare, but is by no means always accompanied by functional disorders.
Scientists suggested that some additional, backup and as yet unexplored channels of interaction between the hemispheres appeared in Kim’s brain.
Perhaps this allows them to work as one giant hemisphere, combining under one “roof” those functions that are normally separated. If this assumption is correct, then Kim owes some of his talents to this anomaly.
Psychologists also studied Kim's abilities. They all agreed on the abstract conclusion that Kim received his extraordinary abilities “as compensation for his inferiority.”
It is interesting that already in the first months after Kim was born, doctors gave the boy a disappointing diagnosis: mental disability - and tactfully suggested that his parents send him to a special boarding school. The Notes opposed the advice of the Aesculapians and left the child in the family. They hoped that they could somehow adapt it to real life.
Kim's unusual abilities first appeared when he was less than two years old. During the family meal, the father, as usual, was reading his favorite newspaper, and suddenly realized that his son sitting next to him was reading the news with him. Since then, Kim's favorite pastime has been reading.
He admitted that by the age of 20 he had read about 10 thousand books. And he didn’t just read, but could easily quote any of them. All of them were miraculously recorded in his memory. It took the boy a few seconds to read and memorize the page. He “got through” thick volumes in just a couple of hours, and years later he could easily reproduce what he had read by heart.
Contact with the world
People with extraordinary abilities have attracted increased attention throughout the centuries. But only in the 19th century did scientists pay attention to savants and study their extraordinary abilities. And the first article on this topic came from the pen of John Down in 1887.
The scientist noted the connection between the mathematical abilities of the subjects being studied and their inherent amazing power of memory. As an example, he cited a case where a savant could quote verbatim any passage from Edward Gibbon's multi-page History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
It should be noted that if at the beginning of his life Kim absorbed any information indiscriminately, then in adulthood his interests extended only to his favorite topics. He gave the greatest preference to world and American history, and he was also interested in religious treatises, sports, cinema, theater, geography, space exploration, fiction and classical music.
Kim could not stand hard rock and vague rap, calling these musical trends “aggressive and irritating,” and received the greatest pleasure from the works of Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi, calling them “light and pure.” In communicating with musicologists, Kim amazed them with the depth of his knowledge.
He could tell where and when the work was written and first performed, named the composer and quite professionally discussed the features of the musical form and tonality of the works. And in the last years of his life, Kim became addicted to the piano and began to perform his favorite works himself.
Kim's adaptation to the realities of life helped other savant parents find hope. They realized that if they pay attention and subtlety to the phenomenal abilities of their children, and do not brush them aside like annoying flies, then their talent will manifest itself. With its help, an unhealthy person can establish contact with the outside world and compensate for the consequences of his illness. This path is extremely difficult because it requires self-sacrifice, patience and hard work from family members.
The efforts of Kim's parents resulted in their son turning from a timid recluse into a world celebrity and living a rich, eventful life. Over the past 20 years, he has flown 3 million miles and spoken to thousands of people. Kim-Puter (as scientists jokingly called him) died on December 19, 2009 of a heart attack in Salt Lake City, two years short of his sixtieth birthday.
Scientists examined Kim's brain and found the following: a number of brain fragments in the late savant are much larger than in ordinary people. They also confirmed that the right and left hemispheres of Kim's brain are not separated at all, but form a single unit. In addition, doctors came to the conclusion that Kim had a congenital pathology of the cerebellum.
Neurosurgeon Jim Ryder, who studied Kim's brain, said:
While we cannot unravel the secret of the unique abilities of savants, we are on the way to this. I believe that the brain of a healthy person has a mechanism for managing storage facilities, where millions of “boxes” with information are located, and is capable of shifting what is needed at the moment into the appropriate “box”. But savants do not have such a mechanism and such “boxes”. They live, as it were, in a warehouse of their memories, surrounded by their treasures, be they numbers, names, arithmetic operations, paintings by artists, sounds of music and words. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of them behave inappropriately and look (in the opinion of healthy people) like eccentrics. I am confident that if we finally unravel the secret of the “rain people,” there will be a real chance to dramatically increase the intellectual capabilities of normal people.
Vladimir PETROV
On Saturday, December 19, Kim Peek, the prototype for the main character in the Oscar-winning Hollywood film “Rain Man,” died in Salt Lake City, Utah. As reported on Monday, December 21, Kim's father, Fran Peak, the cause of death was a heart attack. The man who could easily remember a multi-volume essay word for word, but was not able to button his shirt buttons, was 58 years old.
Kim Peek was born on November 11, 1951 in Salt Lake City. The child's skull was pathologically enlarged - doctors diagnosed the boy with a herniated brain. Doctors examined little Kim and found out that his brain was seriously damaged: the child was missing the corpus callosum - a set of nerve fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres, and in addition, the child had damage to the cerebellum. Medicine was powerless. Doctors told his parents that because of this disorder, the boy would never be able to walk, would never learn to read, and would never be able to communicate normally.
As Kim’s father, Fran, said, despite a rare disorder, the boy actually showed amazing abilities from infancy. The unusual structure of the brain deprived the child of the ability to filter information. At the age of one and a half years, he could easily memorize a book that his mother read aloud to him, and then retell it to his surprised parents. And yet, despite this, Kim was significantly behind his peers in physical development - his motor function was impaired, he could not independently hold a spoon, dress himself or climb stairs.
Initially, specialists who observed the boy believed that he suffered from autism, a disorder resulting from impaired brain development; This disease is characterized by impaired ability to communicate, interact with others and other deviations in social development. Later, psychiatrist Darold Treffert began studying Kim Peak's condition and described it in the book Amazing People: Understanding Savant Patients.
This work, in particular, states that people suffering from “savant syndrome” (the diagnosis is still unrecognized among doctors), or savantism (from the French savant - scientist), have narrowly focused outstanding abilities (the so-called “island of genius "), manifesting themselves against the background of the general limitations of the individual. Treffert called the main sign of savantism a phenomenal memory - such as that of Kim Peak. And yet, even for a savant, Kim was too outstanding a person. And scientists agreed to call him a “megasavant.”
The prototype of the “rain man” knew about twelve thousand books by heart and was an expert in at least fifteen fields of knowledge, including history, geography, literature, mathematics and others. Peake could not only say without thinking in what year, for example, the Scottish mathematician James Stirling was born and name the dates of his discoveries, but also report on what days of the week this happened.
Scientists who have conducted study after study to understand the Rain Man phenomenon have found that the structural feature of Peak's brain allows him to absorb information in literally terabytes. For this ability, Peak was even called “The Computer” and “the living Google.”
During one of the experiments, it was found that Kim spends about ten seconds reading one page of a book. Moreover, this time was enough for him to remember what he read down to the last letter. However, speed is not everything. Pieck read with both eyes at once: if a book was unfolded in front of him, with his left eye he followed the events unfolding on one page, and with his right eye he followed the events on the next. Kim read up to eight books a day.
And yet, he never learned how to handle buttons, combs and laces. In 1975, Kim's parents divorced, and all concerns about him fell entirely on the shoulders of the savant's father. Talking about life with the “crazy genius,” his father once noted that Kim had to be taken care of “30 hours a day, 10 days a week.” And yet, without downplaying the difficulties, the parent of the “rain man” always spoke about his son with undisguised pride.
It fell to Dustin Hoffman to play the main character - Raymond Babbitt, an autist with amazing abilities for mathematics, and Tom Cruise - his selfish brother Charlie, who, however, subsequently becomes sincerely attached to his strange relative. A few months before filming, Hoffman met Kim Peek.
The actor and the savant spent quite a lot of time together and managed to like each other. Having become friends with Kim, Hoffman turned to his father and said that he simply “has no right to hide this guy from the world.” "Dustin had a big influence on Kim's life. I remember he came up to me and said: 'I'm asking you to give me your word that you won't hide him from people.' Show it to the world,'" recalls Fran Peak.
Barry Levinson's film Rain Man was released in 1988. The audience loved the film - many still remember quotes and even entire dialogues from this film by heart. Some especially like the dialogue between Raymond and Charlie about toothpicks and maple syrup, someone is delighted with airport scenes, and some movie fans loved fragment about the Babbitt brothers' trip to the casino.
Rain Man won four Oscars in 1989. The Academy awarded Hoffman (best actor), Morrow (best screenplay) and Levinson (best director), and also named the film "best film of the year." It is noteworthy that Barry Morrow gave his Oscar to Kim, and he took it with him until the end of his days.
The film adaptation of this touching story played a turning role in the life of Kim Peak. After the premiere of the film, the 37-year-old prototype of Raymond Babbitt and his father went on the longest journey of his life - he moved from city to city to meet millions of new people and tell them about himself.
Of course, most of the spectators who gathered at conferences with Kim’s participation first of all turned to him as a “living Google”, interested in where, when and why certain historical events took place. Savant, who could neither be proud of his knowledge nor boast about it, always answered questions with what is called “feeling, sensibility, and thoughtfulness,” which delighted everyone.
Kim himself liked it. He received particular pleasure when someone simply said the name of a particular city, and the savant voiced all the information at his disposal about this locality - its telephone code, significant dates, population, main manufacturing enterprises, postal codes, and so on. .
Fran Peake was always next to his son and noticed every, even the most minimal, change in his condition. According to the rain man's father, Kim learned to overcome difficulties all his life. At the age of 16, he climbed the stairs for the first time on his own, then he realized what handshakes were for, and in the last few years the savant mastered playing the piano and developed a sense of humor.
Over the years, Kim Peek has flown more than three million miles on airplanes and met 64 million people. The father of the most famous savant in the world wrote two books about him, scientists devoted more than four thousand articles to Kim, and documentary filmmakers made over 20 films about the “Rain Man.”
Despite his wide fame, the opportunity to endlessly travel and visit unfamiliar places, Kim Peek loved most in his life to visit the Salt Lake City Public Library, where he entertained himself by reading telephone directories and studying geographic maps.
At one of the seminars, Kim Pik once said: “You shouldn’t perceive your mental or physical disabilities as an obstacle. You shouldn’t think that they make you so special. We are all special, each of us.” Surely many of those who heard this phrase thought then: “Yes, Kim, perhaps you’re right.”
Kim Peek was born in 1951 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The diagnosis of autism made to an infant with an abnormally large head, a cranial herniation and damage to the cerebellum later turned out to be incorrect. And when Kim grew up, it became obvious that the child had Gifted Syndrome (savant syndrome).
Phenomenal development in one particular area to the detriment of others - these are the main symptoms of this rare disease. Thus, Kim Pik, who at the age of three could freely read books from his parents’ library, could not dress, wash or go to the toilet on his own. Due to underdevelopment of the cerebellum, movement coordination disorder was observed. And at the same time, the child managed to put the books he had read on the shelves with their spines up, so as not to confuse them with those he had not yet read. It is clear that there could be no talk of any training in a regular school - Kim Peak was a complete and completely unsolved mystery of nature. Despite the fact that the general picture of his illness was known - the absence of the so-called corpus callosum of the brain, connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain, many uncertainties remained for doctors - neither this nor other congenital brain abnormalities should have led to either dementia or , especially to giftedness. However, Kim Pik demonstrated something unprecedented - his diseased brain was like a computer. First, he developed his own reading technique, in which he read the right page with his right eye and at the same time read the left page with his left eye. Thus, it took him about 8–10 seconds to read the spread of a standard book. At the same time, what he read remained forever in his memory with amazing accuracy, down to the smallest detail. Thus, Kim kept in his memory the contents of thousands of books he read. For this ability to remember a huge amount of information, Kim was even nicknamed “Kim-Puter.”
In 1984, a meeting took place that, although it did not change Kim’s life, became to some extent fateful - it was thanks to the meeting with the writer Barry Morrow that the whole world learned about a phenomenal person, a mentally handicapped genius. So Morrow met Peake as part of a program of events for the Association of Mentally Retarded People. However, this ‘mentally retarded’ shocked the writer so much that that meeting was embodied in the script for the famous film “Rain Man” with Dustin Hoffman. So “Kim Pewter” became the prototype of the “Oscar-winning” film, however, the plot of the film in no way repeats the events of the life of Kim Peek himself, and the real hero did not actually suffer from autism, to which Hoffman’s character was susceptible. But unexpected popularity, as well as meetings with actors and directors, served the previously withdrawn and avoidant Piku good service - he became bolder, learned to talk about himself and gave many disabled people a chance to believe in themselves. Kim stopped being afraid of people, even began to joke and read fiction books, in particular books by Stephen King. The real life story of Kim Peake was told by his father Frank Peake in his book The Real Rain Man. The book was published in 1996 and stirred up a wave of interest in Savant Syndrome in general and Kim Peek in particular. It was found that there are no more than 25 people in the world suffering from a similar disease. However, at the same time the question was raised: is this a disease at all, or is Savant Syndrome the price of genius?
After the release of Rain Man, Peake traveled extensively with his father, demonstrating his abilities around the world. By the age of 53, he knew more than 7,000 books by heart, most of which were reference books and statistical tables. Despite a huge number of tests and studies, scientists have not been able to find the cause of such a rare illness and the gift of Peak. There are no confirmed theories about the causes of this mental disorder, nor an effective method of therapy yet.
Kim Peek died on December 19, 2009 in a Salt Lake City hospital from a heart attack, he was 58 years old.
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Ibid.) - an American with a phenomenal memory, remembered up to 98% of the information he read, for which he received the nickname “Kim-pewter”, the prototype of Dustin Hoffman’s hero in the film “Rain Man” (1988, USA).
Biography
Gradually, a circle of individual topics was formed that interested Kim primarily: world and American history, sports, cinema, geography, space exploration, the Bible, church history, literature and classical music. He knew all the area codes and zip codes in the United States, and the names of all the local television stations in the country. He kept maps of all American cities in his head and could give recommendations on how to get through any of them. He was familiar with hundreds of classical musical works, he could tell where and when each of them was written and first performed, he named the composer and various details of his life. He could spend hours talking about the peculiarities of the musical form and tonality of the works of certain composers and guess the authorship of works unknown to him.
Kim developed a special reading technique. In total, it took about 8-10 seconds to read one standard book spread, and he did not care how the text was located relative to himself. By the end of his life, Kim retained in his memory the contents of about 12 thousand previously read books.
At the same time, Kim suffered from many serious disorders, which to some extent is inherent in all people with gifted syndrome. He had a strange gait, Pieck learned to walk only at the age of four, and had very low muscle tone. He could hardly perform actions to satisfy the most common household and personal needs (for example, he could not button up his shirt buttons on his own), which was most likely due to damage to the cerebellum, which normally regulates motor activity. Kim was practically incapable of abstract thinking (in particular, he could not explain the meaning of proverbs and sayings), but at the same time he perfectly understood the meaning of information and could creatively operate with it, and was witty, which is uncharacteristic for people with such a giftedness syndrome.
To the amazement of scientists, his abilities increased with age. Despite his physical disability, he learned to play the piano in 2002. He played mainly from memory, and could transfer parts of various instruments onto the piano.
The famous Mozart researcher, Greenan, shared her observations:
Kim's knowledge of music is quite significant. It is amazing that he remembers every stroke even of those works that he heard only once, moreover, more than 40 years ago. His observations on the interconnections of musical works, biographical facts from the lives of composers, historical events, film tunes and thousands of other details reveal the scope of his intellectual abilities.
Original text (English)
Kim's knowledge of music is significant. His ability to recall every detail of a composition he has heard-in many cases only once and more than 40 years ago-is astonishing. The connections he draws between and weaves through compositions, composer’s lives, historical events, movie soundtracks and thousands of facts stored in his database reveal enormous intellectual capacity.
Movie hero
The success of the film “Rain Man” had a positive impact on Peak’s fate: he received a lot of offers to participate in various events. This had a positive effect on Kim's self-confidence. Barry Morrow allowed Peake to take his Oscar statuette with him to all these events. Later, this figurine began to be called “The Most Favorite Oscar Figurine”, because more people managed to hold it than any other copy of this well-known film award. He made friends, traveled a lot around the world, demonstrating his abilities. According to Fran Peak, over the last 21 years of his life, Kim flew over 3 million miles (about 5 million kilometers) and spoke with 64 million people. Moreover, immediately after gaining fame and 20 years after the first request, Kim was granted a certificate of education.
The result of Kim's IQ assessment does not give a true picture of the level of his intellectual abilities
The general diagnosis given to Kim was:
nonspecific disorder caused by developmental anomalies
Experts have always noted that Kim has no signs of autism. Although autism itself is often associated with the syndrome of phenomenal abilities, Kim did not suffer from it and was always an open and approachable person.
