Born: 4 November 1929
Died: 21 April 2013
Shakuntala Devi was born to a Kannada Brahmin family, in Bangalore, Karnataka. Her father, C V Sundararaja Rao come across his daughter’s ability to memorize numbers when she was just three years old while teaching a card trick to her. Her father displayed her ability at calculation and took her on roadshows, which she did without any certified education.
In 1944, Devi went to London and travelled the world displaying her prodigious memory and calculation skills. During the mid-1960s after Devi’s returned to India, she married Paritosh Banerji, an IAS officer from Kolkata, but due to personal problems, they divorced in 1979. In 1977, Devi wrote a book ‘The World of Homosexuals’, which was the first published academic study of homosexuality in India, for which she was criticized, and in her documentary ‘For Straights Only’, she mentioned that her marriage to a homosexual man and her desire to closely look at homosexuality for understanding it was the reason of her interest in that topic. Later the book was considered a “pioneer”.

Later in 1980, she participated in the Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate for Mumbai against the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Devi worked as a mental calculator, and in addition to this, she was an author and a notable astrologer who started with writing murder mysteries, short stories and was eagerly interested in music. She performed by multiplying two 13 digit numbers in 28 seconds at the Imperial College, London, in 1980. Smt. Shakuntala Devi’s talent earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records.
In April 2013, Devi encountered severe respiratory problems and was admitted to a hospital in Bangalore. Over time she conquered heart and kidney complications and pass away on 21st April 2013 at the age of 83. Devi was honoured with a Google Doodle on 4th November 2013.