Jacques Inaudi, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJacques Inaudi
Italian calculating prodigy
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Roccabruna, Piedmont, Italy
About Jacques Inaudi
- Giacomo Inaudi (13 October 1867 – 10 November 1950), also known as Jacques Inaudi in France, was an Italian calculating prodigy. He was born in Onorato, Piedmont, Italy.
- As a child he was a shepherd but showed aptitude for mental calculation.
- Inaudi's abilities attracted interest of showmen and he toured around the world. French scientists like Jean-Martin Charcot investigated his abilities, French astronomer Camille Flammarion praised him in strong terms, and Alfred Binet wrote a book on him.
- Inaudi would repeat the numbers he was given before he began his mental calculations.Inaudi was referred to by the Nobel-prize-winning immunologist, Élie Metchnikoff (Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov), in his book The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy (1905).
- Metchnikoff regarded Inaudi as an example of a mutation, in the sense announced by the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries (Die Mutationstheorie, Vol.
- 1, Leipzig, 1901), i.e.
- a sudden leap to a distinct new type that might be regarded as a new species.
- Metchnikoff argued that this kind of abrupt leap in evolution might explain how humans had emerged from apes and that Inaudi was proof that such a mutation was possible.
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