In 2002, a salesman started seeing maths everywhere after being beaten up outside a bar. The violent attack gave him acquired savant syndrome, says science

Before September 2002, Jason Padgett had little interest in mathematics. The former futon salesman from Tacoma, Washington, described himself as someone who spent his time partying, drinking and chasing girls. Maths, he said, was something he had never cared about. Then he was attacked outside a karaoke bar, and the brain injury that followed changed the way he experienced the world.

On September 13, 2002, Padgett had been out with friends when two men attacked and robbed him outside a bar. He was struck repeatedly, including a blow to the back of his head, and was later taken to hospital.

“I heard as much as felt this deep, low-pitched thud as the first guy ran up behind me and smashed me in the back of the head,” Padgett recalled in an interview featured by the BBC’s Outlook podcast. “And I saw this puff of white light just like someone took a picture. The next thing I knew I was on my knees and everything was spinning and I didn’t know where I was or how I got there.”


Doctors diagnosed him with a concussion and a bleeding kidney before sending him home. But it was after leaving hospital that the biggest changes began.

Padgett developed severe obsessive-compulsive behaviour and became frightened of leaving his house. He covered his windows with blankets and towels and even used spray foam to seal his front door. He later said he stayed inside for almost three years.

The world suddenly looked like geometry

Alongside the fear and compulsions, Padgett noticed something he could not explain. Ordinary objects no longer appeared smooth to him.

“Everything that was curved looked like it was slightly pixelated,” he told the BBC. “Water coming down the drain didn’t look like it was a smooth, flowing thing anymore, it looked like these little tangent lines.”

Clouds, puddles and sunlight also appeared to him as patterns and geometric shapes. Raindrops falling into water could form complicated designs that reminded him of mathematical formulas.

“I was surprised…confused. It was beautiful but it was also scary at the same time,” he said.

Padgett had never studied advanced mathematics, but he became increasingly interested in understanding what he was seeing. He spent hours online reading about maths and physics and became especially fascinated by fractals, patterns that can keep producing smaller versions of themselves when viewed more closely.

He started drawing what he saw. Soon he had hundreds of drawings of circles, patterns and fractals, which he believed helped him explain his new way of seeing the world.

A physicist recognised the drawings

The turning point came when a physicist noticed Padgett's drawings and recognised that they were connected to complex mathematical ideas. The man encouraged him to study mathematics, eventually leading Padgett to Tacoma Community College.

His interest in mathematics also helped him find an explanation for his unusual experiences. He came across information about savants and realised that some of what they described was similar to his own experience.

Cognitive neuroscientist Berit Brogaard became involved in studying his case. According to her account in Psychology Today, she arranged for Padgett to undergo brain research in Helsinki, including functional MRI testing and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

The researchers found unusual activity involving areas linked to mathematical processing and visual perception. Brogaard concluded that Padgett had developed a form of synesthesia, in which different sensory or conceptual experiences become connected.

Doctors linked the changes to his brain injury

Padgett was subsequently recognised as an acquired savant, a person who develops extraordinary abilities after a brain injury or other neurological event.

The condition is extremely rare. Unlike congenital savant syndrome, which is present from early life, acquired savant abilities can appear after events such as a stroke, disease or physical trauma.

Padgett's case was unusual because his mathematical abilities and visual experiences appeared after the assault despite his lack of previous mathematical training.

“Most of us don’t have that kind of insight because we don’t visualise mathematical formulas,” Brogaard said, according to the BBC.

His experience eventually became the subject of his 2014 memoir, Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel. He also began travelling, speaking about his condition and selling his detailed mathematical drawings.

He says he now sees beauty everywhere

Padgett's life did not become easier in every way after the attack. He continued dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress. But he also developed a lasting fascination with patterns that most people would simply overlook.

“I see it [beauty] everywhere,” he said.

The two men who attacked him were never convicted, despite Padgett identifying them and pressing charges. Years later, one of them, Brady Simmons, contacted him while receiving treatment for prescription drug addiction and apologised.

Padgett has said he eventually forgave his attackers. For him, the assault remains both a deeply damaging event and the point after which his perception of the world changed completely.

His life after that night became almost unrecognisable from the one he had before it. A man who once questioned what mathematics was good for began seeing mathematical structures in puddles, raindrops and everyday objects, and eventually spent years trying to understand why his brain had changed in such a strange way.