of kim peek, the original rain man, dies

Kim Peek, the original Rain Man, dies: Kim Peek, the autistic savant who inspired the Oscar-winning film Rain Man, has died. He was 58.


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Mr Peek's father Fran said that his son had suffered a major heart attack on Saturday and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, the town where he had spent his life.

Mr Peek was probably the world's most famous savant. Described as a confounding mixture of disability and genius, his astonishing ability to retain knowledge inspired the writer Barry Morrow to write Rain Man, the 1988 movie starring Dustin Hoffman that won four Academy Awards.

Born in 1951 in Salt Lake city, Mr Peek was diagnosed as severely mentally retarded and his parents were advised to place him in an institution and forget about him. Thirty years later, he was classified as a "mega-savant," a genius in about 15 different subjects, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates.