Hans Eberstark

Hans Eberstark ( born January 27, 1929 in Vienna, † 19 December 2001) was an Austrian linguist and head computer.

Eberstark came from a Jewish doctor's family in Vienna ( in the ancestor were also Talmudic scholars ). In 1937 the family fled via Trieste to Shanghai, where he remained until 1947. He then returned with his family to Vienna and studied languages. He was a translator at the Nuremberg Trials.

He spoke 20 languages ​​fluently, including English in addition to German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Hebrew (which he learned as a child ), Yiddish, Norwegian, Danish, Albanian, Papiamento, Creole (Haiti), Surinamese and his favorite language Sranan Tongo, which he received his doctorate. In addition, he spoke many languages ​​such as Chinese on understanding level and additionally hundreds of dialects, for example, the Swiss - German, which he was able to memorize after a brief hearing of dialect speakers.

He also emerged as the top computer, where he processed acoustic oriented numbers. He set a world record when he memorized 11944 digits of pi. He could multiply in the head submitted in writing seven digit numbers in about a minute.

He was a translator at the International Labour Office in Geneva and taught translation techniques at the University of Geneva.