Book Review: "Born on a Blue Day" by Daniel Tammet

Many of us first learned about autistic savants through Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of an autistic savant, Raymond, in the movie "Rainman". When the movie came out I already had personal experience with an autistic savant through a high school friend's older brother, Alan. I was always fascinated by the combination of Alan's amazing mathematical abilities and his profound disabilities and when the movie came out I saw many similarities between Alan and the fictional Raymond.

Daniel Tammet is a 27-year-old autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. What makes Daniel unique is that his is very high-functioning and as a result he is able to give us a first-hand glimpse of how his unique mind works. Daniel's book starts out recalling his childhood years and how he always knew he was different from other kids. He had a hard time developing relationships with other children and didn't understand the social cues that come naturally to the rest of us. Partly due to being part of a large family Daniel was able to develop social skills and relationships with other people.

Daniel sees numbers as shapes and colors and he associates every number up to 1,000 as a unique image. For instance, the number 37 is lumpy like oatmeal and the number 89 looks like light fluffy snow. He was also able to memorize the number pi to the 22,514^th digit and it took him just over five hours to recite it. He saw the number as a landscape and in later tests when they switched some 6s and 9s and asked him to read the number, Daniel could see the changes to the landscape. Every day and word also has an associated color - he was born on a Wednesday and Wednesdays are blue days. Daniel is also able to learn languages very easily. He knows ten languages, learned Icelandic in one week, and has even developed his own unique language.

Like others on the autism scale, Daniel has a compulsive need for order and routine - he eats exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast every morning. He can get overwhelmed in new situations and if he gets stressed he closes his eyes and counts because numbers are comforting to him. But what is remarkable about Daniel, and what makes his story so fascinating, is his ability to explain his experiences to the rest of us.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who knows somebody on the autism scale. There is also additional information about Daniel on the web, including this interview with Diane Sawyer and Daniel's own web site.