Alexis Lemaire
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Alexis Lemaire (born 1980) is a French artificial intelligence researcher who is said by the British newspapers Sunday Telegraph and The Times to be "the greatest human calculator in history" (8 April 2005), "the world most agile brain" by The Independent (April 17, 2005). Lemaire holds the last official world record for extracting the 13th root of a 100-digit number (13.55 seconds) and the last official world record for extracting the 13th root of a 200-digit number (267.77 seconds). The latter is a calculation known as the most difficult in history, but the 13th root of a 100-digit number is worthless and much too easy, it is rather a record of the time of writing the answer rather than calculating mentally.
[edit] The 13th root of a 100-digit number
On 10 May 2002, Alexis Lemaire broke the record of the calculating prodigy Willem Klein, which was 88.8 seconds, and the unofficial one of Gert Mittring, which was 39 seconds.
On 23 November 2004, Gert Mittring attempted to break Alexis Lemaire's record, but it was officially rejected by the Guinness Book of Records, Saxonia Records Club, and the 13th root group.
On 17 December 2004, Alexis Lemaire broke his unofficial world record, reducing it to 3.625 seconds (the time includes reading, calculating, and displaying the answer). He correctly computed the 13th root of the following 100 digit number: 3,893,458,979,352,680,277,349,663,255,651,930,553,265,700,608,215,449,817,188,566,054,427,172,046,103,952,232,604,799,107,453,543,533 - the root of which is 45,792,573.
It demonstrates that the record of calculating the 13th root of a 100-digit number is no longer a mental calculation world record, it is a record of fast writing the answer. Therefore the 13th root of a 200-digit number is the real mental calculation record.
[edit] The 13th root of a 200-digit number
On 6 April 2005, Lemaire calculated the 13th root of a 200-digit number in 513.55 seconds, then broke his own record on 3 June 2005, reducing it to 267.77 seconds. Calculating the 13th root of a 200-digit number in 5 minutes is by far much more difficult than calculating the 13th root of a 100 digit number in 1 second. In comparison, the 13th root of a 100-digit number is the beginner category.
All these records are verified on the official 13th root website.fr:Alexis Lemaire
