Willem Klein

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Willem Klein (4 December 1912 – 1 August 1986), also known as Wim Klein or under his stage names Pascal and Willy Wortel, was a Dutch mathematician, famous for being able to carry out very complicated calculations in his head very fast. On 27 August 1976, he calculated the 73rd root of a 500-digit number in 2 minutes and 43 seconds. This feat was recorded by the Guinness Book of Records.

Wim Klein was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and during the 1940s and 1950s, he worked in circuses in France and the Netherlands until he was hired by CERN in 1958. Klein retired in 1976 and lived an active life in Amsterdam for the next ten years.

On 1 August 1986, Klein was brutally murdered with a knife in his home in Amsterdam. The murderer has never been identified.

[edit] References

Steven B. Smith. Chapter 34 – Wim Klein. The Great Mental Calculators: The Psychology, Methods, and Lives of Calculating Prodigies, Past and Present (1983). Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05640-0. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.