Portal:Utah/Selected biography/5

Kim Peek (born November 11, 1951) is an individual diagnosed with Savant Syndrome with a photographic or eidetic memory and developmental disabilities, resulting from congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbit, played by Dustin Hoffman, in the movie Rain Man.

Kim Peek was born with macrocephaly, damage to the cerebellum, and, most importantly, agenesis of the corpus callosum, a condition in which the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is missing; in Peek's case, secondary connectors such as the anterior commissure are also missing. There is speculation that his neurons make other connections in the absence of a corpus callosum, which results in an increased memory capacity.

According to Peek's father, Fran, Peek was able to memorize things from the age of 16-20 months. He read books, memorized them, and then placed them upside down on the shelf to show that he had finished reading them, a practice he still maintains. He reads a page of text in about 10 seconds (about a book per hour) and, apparently, remembers everything he has read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography, and numbers, to sports, music, and dates. He can recall some 12,000 books from memory. Peek can also do formidable calculations in his head, a skill that serves him well in his day job, where he prepares payroll worksheets.