Math Genius Emerges After Brain Injury

Scientists at MIT are calling on the expertise of a man

in Federal Way because he's a whiz at math

in a way that no other person in the world is.

As Kirsten Joyce shows us, his mathematical gift

isn't one he was born with.

He came by it through a brutal attack.

Fractal-wise, if you look at numbers just as being fractals...

Jason Padgett is the best math tutor

his daughter Megan could ever ask for.

It's very nice because I know that he can explain

it to me and also explain it in a more easier way,

but he can also help me with more advanced math.

Jason wasn't always into geometry.

I was one of those kids that said math was stupid.

His passion for it came unexpectedly,

brutally even, after a mugging eight years ago in Tacoma.

They ran up behind me and smashed me in the back of the head.

It actually knocked me out initially.

Unlike the majority of people who suffer a brain injury

and lose abilities,

Jason gained a rather unique ability to see and draw certain

images. Suddenly, these patterns were obvious and they were everywhere.

I mean, from trees to people to skin to paper,

no matter what it is,

they're following these specific geometric patterns, which I now know are fractals.

Specialists told him he likely acquired Savant's Syndrome,

a very rare case where as a result of his injury,

one part of the brain starts to compensate by making more neural connections.

And the part of his brain that did was the

part that analyzes geometry.

Suddenly, I'm able to basically process more information geometrically,

whereas before I couldn't.

Before this, I could not draw anything.

In fact, it was a joke in our family about Pictionary,

how I was the worst at Pictionary.

That one took probably three weeks, four weeks to draw.

The first fractal he drew was the number pi.

His images looked like something a computer would generate,

but he meticulously creates them by hand.

from the images in his mind, and they are extremely accurate.

Jason admits he is obsessed,

and not being able to turn off this passion

can interfere with daily life.

Yes, it does, constantly.

I dream about it.

My daughter has woken me up counting prime numbers in my sleep.

We would be driving to just like a store or something,

and he'd be focused on like a tree.

And sometimes he'd be really close to a red light,

and I'd be like, okay, Dad, time to stop.

Because he'd see fractals in the trees,

like with the branches and the leaves.

Ultimately, he'd like to use his passion to teach.

This one is just showing how you can actually describe motion.

Considering his experience, it's pretty amazing to him how everything...

Einstein's equation, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

...adds up.

Kirsten Joyce, Q13, Fox News.

Padgett is working with MIT scientists to design something called fractal fusion reactor

that, in theory, would deliver unlimited clean energy.

They're also using his expertise to design magnets.

Who would think something so terrible like a mugging

would turn into something like that?

It's fascinating how the brain works and what he can do now.

It's amazing.