Salo Finkelstein (born 1896 or 1897, date of death unknown) was a

mental calculator Human calculator is a term to describe a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation (such as adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing large numbers). The world's best mental calculators are invited every two ye ...

, ranked eighth in the "100 Greatest Mental Calculators". He was born in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

(then within the

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, now

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

) to a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish family. While at school he was above average in mathematics, and discovered his calculating abilities as well as his faculty in memorizing numbers. At the age of 23, he began demonstrating this in public but lost interest for some time. He found employment with the Polish government in State Statistical office. In 1928 he performed before Professor Hans Henning in the Free City of Danzig. Henning previously tested other calculators, Dr. Ferrol and Gottfried Ruckle, and found Finkelstein to be superior. In 1931 Finkelstein went on an international tour demonstrating his abilities and submitting himself for tests. In 1932 he arrived in the

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and tried without success to find employment in a bank as a checker of calculations. In 1937 an article was published that described and analyzed his abilities, with the general conclusion that although he could perform calculations much more rapidly than most people, his thinking processes seem to obey the same laws and are not indicative of any unnatural powers. In particular, during multiplication, the time for performing operations was proportional not to the numbers of digits in multiplied numbers, but to the number of separate "acts of attention" necessary to perform multiplication by ordinary rules. Also, the correctness of the results was not always 100 percent, decreased rapidly with the growth of the number of "acts of attention", and apparently depended on concentration. After failing to secure himself a job that matched his abilities and unwilling to become a stage calculator, he attempted a career playing

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

between 1941–1949. After that his further fate is unknown.

Notes

References

*Weinlad, J.D., Schlauch W.S. ''An examination of the computing ability of Mr. Salo Finkelstein'',

Journal of Experimental Psychology The ''Journal of Experimental Psychology'' was a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by American Psychological Association. The journal, established in 1916, contained articles relating to experimental psychology. Beginning in 1975, ...

, 21 (1937) 382–40

*Smith, Steven Bradley, ''Great Mental Calculators'',

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...

, 1983,

External links

Salo Finkelstein
at The Great Mental Calculators
Chessgames
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finkelstein, Salo 19th-century Polish Jews Mental calculators Polish chess players Jewish chess players 1890s births Year of death missing Sportspeople from Łódź