List Of People Claimed To Possess An Eidetic Memory
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A number of people claim to have
eidetic memory Eidetic memory ( ; more commonly called photographic memory or total recall) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only onceThe terms ''eidetic memory'' and ''pho ...
, but science has never found a single verifiable case of photographic memory. Eidetic imagery is virtually nonexistent in adults. Most people showing amazing memory abilities use
mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
strategies, mostly the
method of loci The method of loci is a strategy for memory enhancement, which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, journey m ...
. This includes all winners of the annual
World Memory Championships The World Memory Championships is an organized competition of memory sports in which competitors memorize as much information as possible within a given period of time. The championship has taken place annually since 1991, with the exception of ...
and most of the known scientific cases of excellent memories, like
Solomon Shereshevsky Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky (russian: Соломон Вениаминович Шерешевский; 1886 – 1 May 1958), also known simply as 'Ш' ('Sh'), 'S.', or Luria's S was a Soviet journalist and mnemonist active in the 1920s. He w ...
. Regardless, the following list contains people who have claimed photographic memory.Wilding, J.M., & Valentine, E.R.: Superior Memory. Hove, England: Psychology Press (1997).


People claimed to possess an eidetic memory

* Charles Nalder Baeyertz, a publisher and music critic in New Zealand. His capacity to memorize a page at a glance enabled him to display an apparently inexhaustible supply of knowledge and to acquire several languages. He claimed to have learnt Maori by memorizing a dictionary. His favourite party trick was to read a newspaper column then recite it backward. * Winnie Bamara, Australian indigenous woman whose ability to paint scenes accurately and solely from memory attracted wide attention in the 1950s. *
David Boies David Boies (; born March 11, 1941) is an American lawyer and chairman of the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. Boies rose to national prominence for three major cases: leading the U.S. federal government's successful prosecution of Microsof ...
, an American litigator, is frequently described as having a photographic memory that enables him to recite exact text, page numbers, and legal exhibits. Colleagues attribute his courtroom success in part to this ability. * The Darawiish reciter Huseen Dhiqle could memorize upwards of a hundred poems of the Sayid's each of them hundreds of lines long after hearing them once. * The mathematician
Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...
has been characterized as having an eidetic memory. He was able to, for example, repeat the
Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of th ...
of
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
from beginning to end without hesitation, and for every page in the edition he could indicate which line was the first and which was the last even decades after having read it. *
Robert Evans Robert Evans (born Robert J. Shapera; June 29, 1930October 26, 2019) was an American film producer, studio executive, and actor, best known for his work on '' Rosemary's Baby'' (1968), ''Love Story'' (1970), ''The Godfather'' (1972), and ''Chi ...
can identify new objects that appear in starfields of 1,500 galaxies. *
Akira Haraguchi __NOTOC__ (born 1946, Miyagi Prefecture), a retired Japanese engineer, is known for memorizing and reciting digits of pi. Memorization of pi He holds the current unofficial world record (100,000 digits) in 16 hours, starting at 9a.m. (16:28 GMT) ...
holds the unofficial
world record A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity. The book ''Guinness World Records'' and other world records organization ...
for the most decimal places of pi recited by memory. His ability is self-attributed to a strong eidetic memory, though he uses a mnemonic device. *The astronomer Johannes Kepler had a photographic memory according to Rolf Keppler, a descendant of Kepler's brother Christoph. * Klaus Kinski, a German actor, was described by Will Tremper as having a photographic memory, which allowed him to memorize a book page within minutes. * Beth Levine, a cellular biologist, said to have "an eidetic memory, drawing connections that others did not see..." *
C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...
, a literary scholar, novelist and religious writer, was described as "the best read man of his generation, one who read and remembers everything he read." His student Derek Brewer said that one could quote any line from Milton's epic '' Paradise Lost'', and Lewis would continue the reciting the poem from that point from memory. Other students of Lewis told of two separate occasions when Lewis invited them to select any book from Lewis' shelf, begin to read from a page at random, and Lewis would continue. *
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (; born Vishvambhar Mishra) was a 15th-century Indian saint who is considered to be the combined avatar of Radha and Krishna by his disciples and various scriptures. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mode of worshipping Krish ...
, is described in his biography as a "shruti-dhara", or "someone who could memorize anything immediately". *
Dimitri Mitropoulos Dimitri Mitropoulos ( el, Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος; The dates 18 February 1896 and 1 March 1896 both appear in the literature. Many of Mitropoulos's early interviews and program notes gave 18 February. In his later interviews, howe ...
Greek, American conductor was noted for having an eidetic memory which enabled him to conduct without a score, even during rehearsals * Said Nursî, an Ottoman
Islamic scholar In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...
who was able to recite many books from memory. For instance "... So then he olla Fethullahdecided to test his memory and handed him a copy of the work by Al-Hariri of Basra (1054–1122) — also famous for his intelligence and power of memory — called ''Maqamat al-Hariri''. Said read one page once, memorized it, then repeated it by heart. Molla Fethullah expressed his amazement." * "
Shas Pollak Shas Pollak were Jewish mnemonists who, according to the 1917 report of George Stratton in the ''Psychological Review'', memorized the exact layout of words in more than 5,000 pages of the 12 books of the standard edition of the Babylonian Talmud. ...
" (Yiddish: Talmud-Pole), Jewish term for any mnemonist who memorized the exact layout of words in more than 5,422 pages of the 12 books of the standard edition of the
Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cent ...
. However, the claim to eidetic memory was later disputed. * Nigel Richards, New Zealand scrabble player who, despite not speaking French, won the
French World Scrabble Championships The French World Scrabble Championships (french: Championnats du monde de Scrabble francophone) is an annual Scrabble tournament that takes place in a different French-speaking country every year. Created in 1972 by Hippolyte Wouters, it was the f ...
twice by studying the French dictionary for 9 weeks, is said to possess an eidetic memory. *
Lucy Shapiro Lucy Shapiro (born July 16, 1940, New York City) is an American developmental biologist. She is a professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Res ...
, professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in interview claims she has; "an eidetic memory, so if I see a page or write something down, it’s like taking a photograph. I can also move molecules around in three-dimensional space easily and see them" *
Abubakar Shekau Abu Mohammed Abubakar al-Sheikawi (also known by the alias ''Darul Akeem wa Zamunda Tawheed'', or ''Darul Tawheed''; "the abode of monotheism"; born 1965, 1969 or 1975 – 19 May 2021) was a Kanuri man known as the leader of Boko Haram, a Niger ...
, the leader of the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram, has been described as possessing a photographic memory. * Sukarno, the father of Indonesian independence and the first president of the Republic of
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
, is said to have had a photographic memory, which helped him in his language learning. *
Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''
Arturo Toscanini, an Italian conductor. It was estimated that by the end of his career he had memorized over 200 symphonies and up to 100 operas. "One of his second grade school teachers, Signora Vernoni, noticed that Toscanini could memorize poems after a single reading and could pick out on the piano the songs and arias he had heard people singing." *
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
is said to have possessed photographic memory. * Swami Vivekananda is believed to have eidetic memory as he could memorize a book just by going through it for a single time. * The mathematician
John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...
was able to memorize a column of the phone book at a single glance. Herman Goldstine wrote about him: "One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it years later without hesitation." * Stephen Wiltshire is a
prodigious savant Savant syndrome () is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calcu ...
, capable of drawing the entire skyline of a city after a helicopter ride.David Martin. ''Savants: Charting "islands of genius"'',
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
br>broadcast September 14, 2006
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See also

*
Exceptional memory Exceptional memory is the ability to have accurate and detailed recall in a variety of ways, including hyperthymesia, eidetic memory, synesthesia, and emotional memory. Exceptional memory is also prevalent in those with savant syndrome and mne ...
– about the scientific background of research on exceptional memory *
Hyperthymesia Hyperthymesia, also known as hyperthymestic syndrome or highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), is a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. It is extraordi ...
, ability to remember specific details of virtually every day of one's life since childhood


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:People Claimed To Possess An Eidetic Memory
Eidetic memory Eidetic memory ( ; more commonly called photographic memory or total recall) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only onceThe terms ''eidetic memory'' and ''pho ...