The abilities of this man amazed and baffled everyone who happened to see his art. "Genius of calculation", "magician of calculations", "miracle of nature". This is what newspapers and magazines wrote about Arrago without any exaggeration
The surname Arrago was the artistic pseudonym of Roman Semenovich Levitin. He was born in 1883 in the city of Konotop, Ukraine, into a poor Jewish family with many children. Arrago recalled: "Since childhood, I have shown a great penchant for all kinds of calculations, I loved to manipulate numbers and always tried to calculate in my mind." Digital tasks didn't leave him even on walks. Moreover, at night he could not sleep for a long time, carried away by calculations in his mind, easily handling huge numbers.
The young miracle counter dreamed of a university. Alas, in Russia the road to the university was closed for him. Then he went abroad, to France, and became a student of the mathematics department at the University of Paris, the famous Sorbonne.
In France
Soon all his fellow students and professors already knew about the extraordinary talent of a student from Russia. He demonstrated lightning-fast calculations in his head, but for now for his own pleasure. And when asked how he manages to do calculations in his mind so quickly, he shrugged his shoulders in embarrassment. He didn't know it himself.
The young man did not manage to finish the Sorbonne. After the third year, he had to leave her, unable to pay tuition. One of the professors advised his yesterday's student to go to the stage. “You have a rare gift,” he argued, “your vocation is an original genre that will give you a hundred times more than doing science. Just take yourself some sonorous pseudonym, for example, Arrago. The former student heeded the good advice, and he began a new, very difficult life as an itinerant mathematician artist.
Sessions like a fairy tale
Arrago made his debut in Belgium, in Brussels, on the stage of the fashionable theater "Scala". It happened on November 23, 1908. He was terribly worried: how would they meet him, how would the session go? The excitement was in vain. Each number drew a storm of applause. Over time, Arrago became convinced that excitement even contributes to success, and his abilities for quick calculations and memorization even increase.
After performing in Paris, in the huge hall of the Casino de Paris, Arrago toured many large cities in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and other European countries. After a resounding success, he was invited to tour Argentina and Brazil. His tour of the New World lasted seven months. Arrago returned to Europe in the rays of worldwide fame as a man of mystery, as an incomprehensible phenomenon.
In Russia
Arrago could have continued to perform successfully in the West, but he was irresistibly drawn home, to Russia, where he had not been for several years. The first performance of the "calculating genius" in his homeland took place in Moscow in the spring of 1912 on the stage of the restaurant "Yar", famous for merchant carousing. But, strangely enough, the hall calmed down when Arrago appeared on the stage.
On March 10, the newspaper Moskovsky Listok wrote: “Every day in the luxurious Napoleonic hall“Yara”there is an incredible gathering of a select audience, watching with amazement the amazing sessions of Arrago. What he performs on the stage does not at all fit into the framework of the actions of a normal human brain. Indeed, the sessions of Arrago are like a fairy tale and have absolutely no explanation. This is incomprehensible, and nothing more."
Wonderful memory
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On stage, Arrago in a matter of seconds squared and cube the ten-digit numbers named by the audience. Or, on the contrary, he extracted roots from these numbers, of course, without using a pencil or chalk. Or this number (just one of many): Arrago went backstage, and his assistant wrote on two black boards high columns of six-digit numbers, also given by the public. The boards began to spin. Even reading the rapidly flashing numbers was not easy.
Returning to the stage, the artist-mathematician cast a glance at the rotating boards and in a second added the numbers on each of them. Then, almost without hesitation, I squared the results obtained and summarized them in addition! All this at a rapid pace, almost instantaneously.
Several people in the audience slowly checked the artist's calculations on paper. The audience burst into applause when the answers were confirmed. Moreover, Arrago kept in his memory all the numbers that he operated on during the session, and repeated them at the end of his speech. And there were from 50 to 75 such multi-digit numbers!
A well-known popularizer of science, author of the famous "Entertaining Physics" and other similar books, Ya. I. Perelman knew Arrago. “I had the opportunity,” Yakov Isidorovich recalled, “to observe the computational work of this phenomenal counter not only on the stage, but also at home, face to face, and could be convinced that he did not use any special computing techniques, but counted in his mind in general, the same as we do on paper. But his unusual memory helped him to do without recording intermediate results."
Naked nerves
The same amazing memory allowed Arrago to easily master many European languages. He spoke fluent French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Polish!
The ease with which Arrago worked was apparent. In reality, by his own admission, he experienced tremendous tension during the session. And those who sat closer to the stage noticed that this short, thin man with burning eyes and nervous movements had all his muscles tense. “Arrago is a special talent, an abnormal phenomenon,” wrote the magazine “Artist and Stage”. “Admiring his work, at the same time there is such pity in my heart, such sadness. You have before you not a man, but bare nerves. How will it end?"
After performances in Moscow, Roman Semenovich went on tour to St. Petersburg. Here he performed at the Palace Theater, located on Mikhailovskaya Square (now the Musical Comedy Theater). Once, returning after another session to his friend's apartment, Arrago fell fast asleep, and in the morning he was found unconscious.
The doctors' diagnosis was disappointing - brain inflammation. When the artist opened his eyes, Professor Gerver, who was treating the patient, suddenly asked him: "How much will it be if 327 is multiplied by 649?" And Arrago answered in a weak voice: "212 223". The professor smiled: "Well, then the situation is not so bad, but you will have to leave the speeches for a while."
Arrago's forced rest did not last long. New tours began. He performed in Odessa and Kharkov, Nikolaev and Kherson, Mineralnye Vody and Baku.
It is clear that Arrago's unique talent could not fail to attract the attention of neuropathologists, psychiatrists and psychologists. In St. Petersburg, Academician V. M. Bekhterev. In Moscow, Arrago was examined by a group of doctors led by the famous professor N. N. Bazhenov. They tested it in Kiev and Irkutsk. Once, there was even a competition between Arrago and an adding machine of the latest brand, and the artist won, ahead of the car by 8 seconds.
But even the most prominent psychiatrists and psychologists were powerless to explain how the counter manages to make complex calculations in his mind at lightning speed, how he was able to capture the entire table of logarithms in his memory. In 1929, Arrago bequeathed his amazing brain to the Institute for the Study of Brain and Mental Activity, founded by V. M. Bekhterev.
Even in pre-revolutionary times, one Moscow magazine advised Arrago to quickly abandon the heavy, nervous art and "descend from the heavens of genius to earth safe and sound." But Arrago did not leave the stage and performed for many more years. During the Great Patriotic War, he gave screenings in hospitals and military units, and after the war - in pop theaters and in circus arenas.
Roman Semenovich Arrago did not live a very long life. The "magician of calculations" died in Leningrad on November 29, 1949 at the age of 66.
Gennady CHERNENKO
Secrets of the 20th century.