◀ ▲ ▶History / 19th-century / Person: Dase, Johann Martin Zacharias

Person: Dase, Johann Martin Zacharias

Zacharias Dase was a German mental calculator.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• The final statement about extracting the square root is claimed by some to be an incorrect report of one of Dase's exhibitions, where in fact the extracted the 52nd root from a 97-digit number.
• Dase was in Vienna in 1840 giving an exhibition.
• Dase used his calculating ability to calculate to 200 places, taking about two months for this task.
• In 1849 Dase proposed to the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg that he would compute the factors of all the numbers from 7 million to 10 million.
• The Hamburg Academy of Sciences awarded Dase the financial support he requested and he began to undertake the huge task.
• It was the mathematician Julius Petersen who spent six weeks trying to teach Dase some of Euclid's propositions but discovered that this was completely beyond Dase.
• A modern medical expert assessing Dase using the descriptions of his personality and other factors, would suggest that he suffered from Asperger's syndrome.

Born 23 June 1824, Hamburg, Germany. Died 11 September 1861, Hamburg, Germany.

View full biography at MacTutor

Tags relevant for this person:

Origin Germany, Puzzles And Problems

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

Github:

non-Github:

@J-J-O'Connor

@E-F-Robertson

References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

1. O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive