Twins compute calendar dates

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33083, 25 November 1972, Page 11

Twins compute calendar dates

(By

DAVID GUNSTON)

Charles and George—live in New York City and are unique. No two people quite like them have ever been known before in human history. They are identical twins and are both geniuses at swift mathematical calculation in their heads on a scale never recorded before. Their speciality is computing calendar dates. They are completely self-taught at this, but the range, speed and 100 per cent accuracy of their calculations has amazed the mathematicians, psychiatrists and doctors before whom they have recently been demonstrating. Charles is completely accurate on any calendar date or day of the week for the present century, but his brother can project his incredible mind backwards

into the past and forwards into the future over a range of at least 6000 years. Ask him what day of the week February 15, 2002, will be, and he will casually reply “Friday;” or what day of the week August 28, 1591, was, and he will tell you correctly, “a Wednesday.” When asked in what year April 21 falls on a Sunday, both Charles and George will correctly answer 1968, 1957, 1953, 1946, and so on. With a little encouragement, George will go steadily back as far as 1700. When he was asked in what month of the year 2002 will the first of the month fall on a Friday, George immediately replied February, March and November—all correct answers. Apparently infallible The twins can also reveal without the slightest hesitation that the fourth Monday in February, 1993, will be the twenty-second in that year, and that the third Monday in May, 1936, was the eighteenth of that year, and so on. You cannot catch them out. Now this sort of thing—on a lesser scale—is not unknown among child prodigies, the kind of mathematical calculating genius

- that sometimes occurs as a “sport" or “freak.” But Charles and George have been at it since the ages of six and nine respectively, although they were never child prodigies in any other way. They are in fact both men of 25 now, and since their calculating feats range beyond the scope of the usual printed 200 to 400-year perpetual calendar that they 1 might have seen at some time in the past, it is clear their skill does not involve merely • a phenomenal memory. In any case, you may wonder how their astonishing skill has fitted them in life. In a bank, perhaps, or teaching? Working with computers, or in a science laboratory? In institution

Not a bit of it, alas. For Charles and George are inmates of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where for two years past they have been studied by experts. Before that they had spent 13 years in a state mental institution. Not because they are dangerous in any way, but simply because they in fact possess a sub-normal intelligence. So for their own safety and comfort, they have to live in institutions. Both men have I.Q.s in the 60-80 bracket, perhaps the level of a four-year-old. In every other area of intelligence they are sub-normal: they cannot properly read or write, subtract, add, divide or multiply simple one-digit numbers. Such cases are exceptionally rare, and have never been known before as identical twins. They are known to medical science by the old and not very attractive name of “idiot savants.” Charles and George cannot help their condition, nor can they explain their spontaneous skill. All they say is that when asked a calculation, “I know the answer,” or “It’s in my head." So far, at least, the serious investigators who have been studying these two amazing men can come up with no better explanation than that.