Rain Man inspiration was Mt Everest of memory

In 1988,the film Rain Man,about an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman,shed a humane light on the travails of autism while revealing the extraordinary powers of memory that a small number of otherwise mentally disabled people possess,ostensibly as a side effect of their disability. The film won four Oscars,including best picture,best actor and,for Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass,best original screenplay. But it never would have been made if Morrow had not had a chance meeting with Kim Peek,who inspired him to write the film.

Peek was not autistic not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. But with an astonishing skill that allowed him to read facing pages of a book at once one with each eye he read as many as 12,000 volumes. Even more remarkable,he could remember what he had read. Indeed,Peek,who died December 19 at home in Salt Lake City,had perhaps the worlds most capacious memory for facts. He was 58. The cause was a heart attack,said his father,Fran Peek.

Almost all documented savants people with an extraordinary depth of knowledge and the ability to recall it have been restricted in their expertise to specific fields like maths,chess,art or music. But Peek had a wide range of interests and could instantly answer the most arcane questions on subjects as diverse as history,sports,music,geography and movies. He was the Mount Everest of memory, Dr Darold A Treffert,an expert on savants who knew Peek for 20 years,said in an interview.

Peek had memorised so many Shakespearean plays and musical compositions and was such a stickler for accuracy,his father said,that they had to stop attending performances because he would stand up and correct the actors or the musicians.

Rain Man changed Peeks life. Barry influenced me more than any other person, he said of Morrow. He made me Rain Man.