To Jason Padgett, math is everywhere. Even something as simple as brushing his teeth follows math. He turns on the faucet and dips his brush in water exactly 16 times.
“I don’t know why I’m obsessed with perfect squares,” he says. “And the number 16 isn’t random, it’s two perfect squares, two times two is four, then four times four is sixteen. I just love that perfection… everything I do follows that instinct automatically.”
As a fractal math genius, few know that 18 years ago Padgett lived a very different life in Tacoma, Washington. Back then, he was just a carefree young man working at a mattress store.
“I used to live very shallowly“, he laughs. “My life was all about girls, parties, and drinking. Waking up hungover, going out chasing girls, then hitting the bar again.“
Padgett had no concept of math. “I used to say ‘Math is stupid, how can you apply it to real life?’” he admits.
But on a Friday the 13th night in September 2002, everything changed. While out with friends, Padgett was attacked by two robbers outside a karaoke bar. Finding nothing valuable on him, they took his worn leather jacket.
“I just heard a thud in my head when the first guy ran up from behind and hit my back. Then I saw a white flash like someone took a photo. I collapsed, everything spun, and I lost track of where I was or why I was there,” Padgett recalls.
Staggering to his feet, Padgett made it to a hospital across the street. Doctors said he had a mild concussion and kidney bleeding from a punch to the stomach. “They gave me a painkiller and sent me home,” he says.
Strange things started happening after that. Padgett developed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), likely from the brain injury. People with OCD often have unusual behaviors, for Padgett, he became terrified of the outside world and only left home to stock up on food.
“I remember nailing blankets over all the windows in my house,” he says. “For the front door, I sealed it with foam spray.” His OCD also made him extremely afraid of germs.
He has a daughter with his ex-wife who lives with her mother but visits sometimes. “Every time she came over, I’d obsessively wash my hands. The first thing I’d do was take off her shoes, change her into clean clothes, then take her to wash her hands,” he says.
Padgett clearly suffered a lot from the attack, but something incredible happened in how he saw the world. His perception changed.
“Every curve I looked at started breaking down into pixels,” he explains. “Water flowing down the drain wasn’t just flowing anymore. It looked like tiny tangent lines.”
Clouds, sunlight filtering through trees onto a puddle, Padgett saw everything differently. To him, the world now looked like a four-button video game. “I was amazed… confused. It was beautiful but also scary,” he says.
As the outside world shifted before his eyes, Padgett began pondering big questions about math and physics. He spent all his time at home on the internet reading. That’s where he discovered fractals and fell in love.
Fractal geometry is a tough concept. Basically, it’s about shapes that look jagged at every scale and can be broken into parts that resemble the whole but smaller.
The simplest example is a snowflake. Zoom in and you see smaller snowflakes connected. Zoom in further and those smaller snowflakes are made of even tinier ones, repeating infinitely.
Although fascinated by fractals, Padgett only really dove deep after his daughter asked, “Dad, how does the TV work?”
“If you look at a circle on a TV screen, it’s not really a circle,” Padgett says. “The circle is actually made of rectangles or squares. Up close, the edge looks zigzagged.
Now you can take those pixels and cut them in half, then half again. Each time the pixels get smaller, your circle looks more perfect. But you’ll never get a true circle.
You can keep making pixels smaller forever. The screen’s resolution increases, but the magnified circle’s edge stays zigzagged. You’ll never have a perfect circle.”
Realizing this, Padgett’s OCD found a new focus. He felt compelled to explore fractal geometry. He started drawing, and kept drawing.
“I drew thousands of circles, rectangles, every shape I could. It was the only way I could live in the new world I saw,” he says. Padgett believes his drawings hold the key to unlocking a new universe. He carries them everywhere.
A rare trip outside caught the attention of a stranger who told him his drawings looked mathematical.
“I was trying to describe the discrete structure of spacetime based on Planck length (a tiny unit developed by physicist Max Planck) and quantum black holes,” Padgett explains.
The man, a physicist, was stunned. Recognizing his talent, he urged Padgett to enroll in a community college math class. That’s when Padgett finally learned the numbers and math language to express his obsessions.
After three and a half years holed up at home with a computer, internet, and fractal obsession, Padgett emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. He began showing real talent.
With support, Padgett managed his OCD and fear of the world. He even met a new woman who became his second wife.
But what really happened? What about that fateful Friday the 13th changed Padgett’s world, making him see math, shapes, and graphs everywhere?
Once again, the TV gave him a clue. He was watching a math show where a man suddenly turned into another genius, describing a world made entirely of numbers.
“I always said math isn’t just numbers. That was the first time I heard someone else describe what numbers look like,” Padgett recalls.
He searched online for that man but instead found Berit Brogaard, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Miami. They talked for hours on the phone. From those talks, Brogaard hypothesized Padgett had synesthesia, a condition where brain cross-wiring mixes senses.
About 4% of people experience synesthesia. For example, seeing a number might trigger a color, a taste, or a texture. One could see 1 as blue, 2 as purple, 3 as red…
A world seen through synesthesia is very different. Inside the brain, neural pathways decode the world in vivid, mixed-up ways.
Some synesthesia is genetic, but it can also develop after brain injury, stroke, or allergies, anything affecting the brain.
After talking with Padgett, Brogaard believed his brain injury 17 years earlier activated his visual cortex alongside the brain area that processes shapes and math formulas.
This made fractal outlines and geometry appear before Padgett like they were behind a prism or a supercharged filter. “Most of us can’t excel at math because we don’t see math in real life,” Brogaard says.
But Padgett can, and synesthesia turned him into a genius.
To confirm this, Brogaard took Padgett to the Brain Research Unit at Aalto University in Helsinki, where his brain was scanned.
Brogaard showed a series of math equations, including fake ones, on a screen while Padgett was in an MRI machine. Researchers wanted to see which brain areas lit up responding to real math.
“They found I had access to brain regions most people don’t. Plus, my visual cortex was active alongside math-related areas. It was clear,” Padgett says.
Brogaard’s theory was confirmed. Padgett was diagnosed with synesthesia, which suddenly made him a math genius.
Once things became clear, Padgett started writing a memoir about his experiences. He also traveled to talk about math, promote education, or simply share fascinating math patterns with people who can’t see them.
Years after the attack, one of the two strangers sent Padgett an apology letter. It was Brady Simmons, a man recovering from drug addiction after a suicide attempt.
In a way, two lives changed after that attack. “I’m disgusted by the person I was. I can’t imagine how I lived so badly,” Simmons says. But now he’s a changed man who regrets his past.
Padgett also feels like a different person. “I see everything in life as beautiful,” he says. He can be mesmerized by simple things most people miss.
For example, a raindrop falling on a puddle now looks like complex wave equations layered with sparkling snowflake shapes. Padgett is excited to share this world with others. He wants everyone to feel that beauty.
“Imagine just walking around and being amazed by ordinary things simply existing,” Padgett says. “I’m awakening to math and seeing everything around us as miracles, or at least the closest science gets to magic.”
Source: BBC
