In 1988, Dustin Hoffman starred in Rain Man, about an autistic savant who had an amazing memory. The film won four Academy Awards, including best picture, best screenplay, and best actor.
The story was inspired by Peek, a savant who was born with macrocephaly, not autism, and was able to read both facing pages in a book at the same time (one with each eye) and remember everything he read — an estimated 12,000 books. He could not go to plays or musical performances, his father said, because he’d instantly know if a performer made a mistake. “He’d stand up and say: ‘Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off!’” said his father, Fran Peek.
When he was 6, a doctor suggested a lobotomy for the retarded child — but by then he had already memorized the first eight volumes of family’s encyclopedia. “How he learned to read, I just don’t know,” his father said. “He was the Mount Everest of memory,” said Dr. Darold A. Treffert, an expert on savants who studied Peek. “He can identify hundreds of classical compositions, tell when and where each was composed and first performed, give the name of the composer and many biographical details, and even discuss the formal and tonal components of the music. Most intriguing of all, he appears to be developing a new skill in middle life. Whereas before he could merely talk about music, for the past two years he has been learning to play it.” He was also developing a sense of humor, his father said. Laurence Kim Peek died December 19 from a heart attack. He was 58.