Jason Padgett (The Man Who Sees Math as Shapes)
On the night of Friday, the 13th, September 2002, Jason Padgett, and his friends left a karaoke bar. Unbeknownst to him, two other individuals followed him outside and one of the men struck him in the back of the head, knocking him to the ground. Padgett remembers seeing a bright white flash, like a camera bulb popping, and remembers hearing the thud as much as he felt it. The men stole his jacket and left him with a concussion and a great deal of pain.
As a result of his injury, Padgett’s personality changed. A young man, who described himself as a partier and a girl chaser, he soon found himself to be agoraphobic and a germaphobe. He also, saw the world differently. Things looked odd to him, as if items were assembled by small geometric pieces. Running water, was not a smooth fluid shape, but composed of several tangent lines. Curved objects appeared pixelated, derived from several triangles converging on one another.
This new observation perplexed him, and he took to the internet to understand what it was he was seeing. After reading several mathematical concepts, he came upon an article about fractals. Fractals are a complex concept within geometry. Fractals describe shapes in a pattern that repeats itself throughout an object. For example, a snowflake, when viewed under a telescope, is made up of hundreds of tinier, but identical versions, of the overall shape. For the first time in Padgett’s life, he was interested and then obsessed with mathematics.
He decided to read and study mathematics and decided to draw his visions using only paper, pencil, a compass, and ruler. While traveling one day, a stranger noticed his conceptual art and remarked it looked mathematical. Padgett, responded, “I’m trying to describe the discrete structure of space time based on Planck length and quantum black holes.” The stranger, who was a physicist, advised Padgett to enroll in math classes. Padgett signed up for studies at a local community college so he could learn mathematical terminology to communicate his ideas.
He eventually sought an answer for his newfound baffling ability and located a cognitive neuroscientist named Berit Brogaard. After several phone conversations, Brogaard theorized that Padgett’s brain had rewired itself following the injury and he had a case of synesthesia.
In simple terms, Padgett’s could see math. He did not see it as numbers, but rather, it took form in shapes.
Brogaard convinced Padgett to undergo tests at the Brain Research Unit of Aalto University in Helsinki. The scans revealed that Padgett’s left hemisphere was most active, especially in the left parietal cortex, a part of the brain that assembles information gathered by the senses. The temporal lobe (visual memory, sensory processing, and emotion) was extremely active as was the frontal lobe, an area that manages planning and attention. The scans showed that his senses were collaborating with the part of his brain that does math. Following the tests, doctors diagnosed Jason as having Acquired Savant Syndrome and synesthesia.
In 2014, Padgett authored a book about his abilities called Struck by Genius. Sony and Channing Tatum purchased the movie rights to the book.
He remains the only person known to science who can see fractals and draw them as well. Today, he travels the world as a speaker and identifies himself as a number theorist who sells his mathematical art online.
