> because he had a photographic memory and just so happened to leaf through a book containing a required proof
It makes for good rumours and TV show plots, but this sort of "photographic memory" has never been shown to actually exist.
It makes for good rumours and TV show plots, but this sort of "photographic memory" has never been shown to actually exist.
If he could remember that sort of thing, I can believe there are people who can remember steps of a proof, which is a much less random thing that you can feel your way around, given a few queues from memory.
Plus, realistically, how closely does an examiner read a proof? They have a stack of dozens of almost the same thing, I bet they get pretty tired of it and use a heuristic.
https://medium.com/young-spurs/the-unsung-genius-of-john-von...