Sakunthala Devi

More than 40 percent of world population (kids, adults and even elderly) find mathematics a difficult subject. We cannot live without maths isn’t it? There lived a woman, who breathed mathematics, enjoyed mathematics and had her life playing with mathematics. She is none other than SAKUNTHALA DEVI.

Sakunthala Devi, known more as ‘HUMAN COMPUTER’ is one of the renowned personalities in the world. She is famous for her knowledge and swiftness in mathematics.

Born in India, she was born in a poor family, to a circus and street artist. She used to accompany her father who used to perform circus in streets. At a very tender age of 3 years, she had amazing knowledge on maths. Also, she mastered remembering the numbers using the card tricks. After understanding her knowledge in mathematics, her father made her a part of his daily street show. She did not have education in any superior school nor studied mathematical in Business schools. She effortlessly counted, multiplied, divided and subtracted numbers of lager digits.

Later, she moved to London with her father on pursuit of circus. She solved a complicated maths question 5 times faster than a computer.

Her flawless calculation and maths knowledge made her highly knowledgeable astrologer, who predicted accurate results on movement of planets and their efforts. She served as a personal astrologer for many celebrities in India and foreign nations. She was also a great writer, who wrote many novels and cookbooks.

She died a year back due to respiratory issues. She wasn’t recognized great for her achievements and intelligence.

A salute to this amazing personality who had incredible gift, a rarest of its kind! 

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey, the great personality of the world. A renowned name in the world of celebrities has inspired people across the globe! Read about her life story here!

The black beauty has been a great source of inspiration for millions of people. She did not attain this worldwide fame in a day. She experienced innumerable sorrows and horrible days during her childhood. She had been a victim of sexual abuse and molestation by her relatives. Despite her sorrows and painful days, she rose from all those notorious label and became an inspiring personality.

Oprah Winfrey was born to an unmarried teen mother. She had her childhood in the Mississippi and was brought up by her grandmother in a farm. Her mother went in pursuit of a career (for a job) in the north. Her childhood was very sweet although the environment wasn’t very luxurious. In spite of her primitive lifestyle, her grandmother taught her to read and write. The intelligent and blessed girl was able to read and recite poems and verses from The Bible. She wrote and recited bible - verses in community services. She enjoyed in abundance the love and care from her grandmother and the community church.

All her happiness vanished when she was 6 years old. Her life had a tragedy when she was taken by her mother to Milwaukee. Her mother worked as a servant maid in an apartment. The little girl used to spend her time in loneliness in her apartment until her mother returned from work. When she turned nine, she was sexually abused by her relatives. Since she was alone at home, there was nobody to care for her and protect her from the cruel men. Many relatives used to molest her and she became a sexually promiscuous girl at the age of 13. She ran away from home and started to live independently at the age of 14 years.

She had a male child when she was teen and the child passed away in infancy. She later left to Nashville to live with her father, where her life changed forever for good!

Her father was a strict man and helped her shape her life. He taught her all principles and disciplines of leading a beautiful life and the little girl got back her happy life after several years. She became Miss Black Beauty of Nashville.

She won the Miss Black Tennessee Beauty Pageant when she was 17 years old and immediately she was offered a job in a radio station. The job was intended to serve the American African Community in Nashville. In addition, she also grabbed the full scholarship from the Tennessee State University and she earned her major degree in Speech Communications and Performing Arts.

Her career in the field of broadcasting started off smoothly. She began as a reporter and an anchor in a television channel. She continued to study as well.

After moving to Baltimore, she co-hosted her first talk show called People Are Talking! This particular job suited her personality perfectly and she spread this show to other cities too. Very soon, in less than 8 years, the show became the hottest and most popular in the town.

In 1985, the colour and format of the show was changed and it was then renamed as the popular, ‘Oprah Winfrey Show!’

Her talk show gained world-wide publicity and she interviewed great personalities of the world. She was a film producer, a philanthropist, an actress, and a publisher.

She became the richest personality and the most powerful woman of the millennium! 

Nelson Mandela

History made simple!!!

Let us learn about great personalities and motivational facts about them in a simple way! Now, let us start with Nelson Mandela.

First black president of South Africa imprisoned for 27 years for fighting against racism.

Born in a small village and grew up in a conservative family with no literacy. He was the first member to attend school in his family.

He gave his voice as a non-violence movement against racism, but turned armed man.

Mandela was great in depicting himself in various disguises - A master of disguise.

As he spent more than half of his lifetime in prison, he mastered the art of passing notes to help other prisoners.

He made a speech about he welcomes death happily made him survive!

His ideas and policies improved the life of millions of people.

He used sports as a tool to disappear the racism in the country. 

He won hundreds of awards and rewards, which includes 250 awards, 50 honorary degrees from renowned institutes across the world, and many more.

He was the first living person in the history to receive the ‘Honorary Canadian Citizen’ award.

His birthday, 18th June has been declared by UN as a Global Holiday – Nelson Mandela International Holiday.

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa needs no introduction. She is an inspirational personality who poured the unconditional love for the poor. The noble prize winner acclaimed globally for her incredible and heart-warming charitable services. We can call her the kindest heart in the world!

Mother Teresa’s incredible services have been renowned in India as she spent several years in India. The early childhood days of this beloved personality is little known? Born in Skopje, in capital city of Republic of Macedonia, she at a very tender age had an institution and innate feeling to serve the needy people. She had feeling that she wanted herself to be called a nun. When she turned 18 years of age, she had the permission to pursue her dream and joined a group of nuns. She had training in Ireland and after a few months of training, she was permitted to visit India.

Soon after arriving at India, she started working as a teacher in Calcutta. The poverty, unhealthy and deprived lifestyle all over the city created a strong impression in her mind that she should help them. This led her to begin a new order named as ‘The missionaries of Charity.’ The ultimate goal of this charity is to serve the people who had nobody to look after them. Her devotion to the charitable services had a great start in Calcutta. She devoted her entire life to help and serve the needy people.

Born as a Roman Catholic, Mother Teresa always believed and preached that serving the peoples is the chief principle preached by Jesus Christ.

Still, she had a great passion towards India and Indian customs and practices. Although she faced a few traumas due to Hindu Muslim Violence and communal violence in Calcutta, she continued her service without any hesitation. After independence, she left the convent and joined the poor in city. She began to wear white sari with blue lines in the border, respecting the Indian tradition.

Her full-fledged services began and she was accompanied by many fellow nuns. The entire crew survived with little food and trivial income. She and her fellow nuns never hesitated to beg for funds as well for foods sometime.

She was invited for a grand function. Heavy and grand lunch is the part of the celebration. After lunch, Mother Teresa started to collect the leftovers from the lunch plates served at the party hall. When others made fun of her, she replied them politely that ‘There are many poor kids who have never tasted most of the foods served here.’

Besides being a lovable and kind hearted woman, Mother Teresa who born as a Roman Catholic and respected the traditions of India never went behind conversion of faith in religion. All the people in her homes and under her care were provided appropriate religious and traditional rites. 

The small initiation of Mother Teresa was sparked by her intuition and simple thought. Her Missionaries of Charity now spread across various parts of the world as a huge, strong and undying tree with service motive to serve the homeless people. She passed away in the year 2003. Her soul remains with her.

A beautiful saying by Mother Teresa!

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, the scientist, the engineer and an inventor who gave a dramatic development to communication. Little do we know about him except as the inventor of telephone! Let us learn a few interesting facts about this famous personality.

He was Scottish and grew up in Scotland. His childhood was surrounded by science and experiments.

He was named after his grandfather Alexander Bell and had no middle name. His middle name GRAHAM was gifted by his father as a birthday gift when he turned 11 years.

His family was fond of communication and made many efforts to improve and simplify communication. This created a deep interest in Alexander’s mind and he became very passionate about science.

He moved to Canada when he was 23 years old. He studied about human voice and to gain experience, he worked at many schools for hearing impaired.

Bell’s work towards exploring the world of communication and speaking words was greatly recognized and experienced by his mom and wife. They both were deaf and he sought the inspiration from his family.

Lesser known fact is that this famous personality was an amazing piano player and he mastered it at a very young age.

His experiments with sounds and voices led him experiment with various sound devices like Harmonic telegraph, phonautograph, etc, which enabled him to send multiple voice messages through a single wire, recording sounds and messages, etc. Further, he worked on an acoustic model to develop a new communication device.

In the year 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, an electrical engineer filed the Patent Right for a device that would transmit the telegraphic sounds. It was a debate and the two were arguing over who filed the Patent Right first. However, Bell was awarded the patent right. In a few days, he invented the first telephone and succeeded in his attempts.

The first words spoken by Bell through the telephone were to his assistant -‘Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you’.

His continuous research and experiments helped him improve the design of the telephone and it was then used by more than a million in the US.

In addition, he also had strong interest in related fields of science. He was a part of many medical researches, hunted for discovering the alternative fuels, experimented with metals and much more.

His childhood was filled with tragedies and he battled the dreaded disease of 19th Century, tuberculosis. His spirit and passion helped him recover.

Bell has beautifully infused science and love by inventing telephone.

A famous quote from this great personality! – Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.  

Alan Turing

Have you heard about Alan Turing? He is one of the great personalities of the world! He is an intellectual, a brilliant mathematician, philosopher and the founder of computer science. Read briefly about this great personality.

Alan Turing was born in the year 1912 on June 23 in London. His father worked in the Indian Civil Service. His father retired in the year 1926 and the parents of Alan Turing lived in India until the retirement. Alan Turing lived with his relatives and his brother until his father and mother returned to London.

He had passion and love for mathematics since his childhood. After completing formal school education, he studied his favourite subject at the acclaimed Cambridge University.  After completing the studies, he worked towards exploring the massive world, the quantum mechanics. His research and studies at Cambridge made him develop the proof that all automatic computations won’t solve the mathematical problems. This concept is named as Turing machine. Turing machine served as a strong base for all modern theories of computation.

He started working as a part time secret agent for the Government Code and Cypher School in the cryptanalytic department. When the war broke out, he earned his full time job in the same department and started working at the Headquarters.

It was only Alan Turing who decoded and interpreted all the messages conveyed by the machine. His decoded messages acted as an important intelligent boost to the supporters. He designed a machine called bombe, which flawlessly encrypted all the messages in German. His invention earned all the fame and recognition, made his a renowned personality.

He further invested a lot of time developing the machine to process logical information with ease. All his ideas were abruptly dismissed and disapproved by his colleagues. Unfortunately, the machine was never invented, and his ideas weren’t given life, otherwise, it would have earned him great honour.

He developed the body of his blueprint idea in the Manchester University, which played a vital role as a strong foundation to the artificial intelligence field. Soon, he was elected as the member of the Royal Society.

He was arrested for trying out homosexuality, which was an offence.  In order to escape from imprisonment, he had hormonal injections. While the case filed against him was withdrawn, he was terminated from the Bletchley Park. Sadly, he committed suicide in a couple of years. If he had survived, he would have made a lot more amazing inventions and set a benchmark for many computing theories and technological devices!