Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel

In September 2002, author Padgett was brutally mugged as he exited a Tacoma karaoke bar. The hospital medical exam revealed a profound brain concussion, and Padgett was treated and released. The next day, the author began to experience a keen ability to understand high levels of math and physics, as well as grasp developed skills for drawing complex geometric shapes that he started to see in everything. Padgett's diagnosis was acquired savant syndrome, a condition that had formerly been diagnosed in only 30 other individuals. Padgett's skills also included the unusual characteristics of synesthesia—the ability to hear colors, smell sounds, or perceive words and numbers in different hues, shapes, and textures. This combination placed him in the rarified, select group of only one person in the world with both diagnoses. Before his assault, Padgett admits to being an ordinary, not terribly bright worker in his father's furniture shop and never progressing beyond pre-algebra. Now a renowned mathematician and number theorist, he continues to work with neuroscientists and other medical researchers on the intriguing possibility that his brain might reveal how similar higher functioning expertise might exist in dormancy within the brains of others.