Kim Peek may have been the world's most famous savant. Dustin Hoffman portrayed a character based on Peek in the 1988 film Rain Man, which triggered hundreds of news stories and documentaries about the man with "islands of remarkable abilities in a sea of disabilities," as scientists described him.

Kim Peek可能是世界上最出名的博学之士，1988年达斯汀·霍夫曼的电影《雨人》就是以他为原型的。这部电影引发了关于Peek成百上千的新闻报道和档案记录，科学家们说他跟常人比起来力所不及的事情犹如汪洋大海，而他的才能就像这海中的孤岛一样闪耀，让人印象深刻。

According to his father, Peek suffered a heart attack Saturday at his home in Murray, Utah. He was 58.

据他父亲所说，Peek周六在犹他州的家中心脏病发，享年58岁。

Kim Peek couldn't operate a light switch or button his shirt. But his memory was so vast and deep and exact, he was compared to a computer. In fact, some called him "Kim-puter."

Kim Peek不会开灯关灯，也不会系衬衫纽扣。但是他的记忆力强大而精确，被比作电脑，一些人把他叫做Kim-puter。

"He had a bottomless memory," recalls Daniel Christensen, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah's Neuropsychiatric Institute. During the past 20 years, Christensen examined, tested and traveled with Peek.

犹他大学神经研究所精神病学临床教授Daniel Christensen回忆说，“他的记忆是个无底洞”。在过去20年中，Christensen一直在为Peek做检查和测试，和他一起周游各地。

Peek had the ability to recall facts and patterns about history, mathematics, music and geography but, adds Christensen, "the ability to take those things ... and use them, to reason with them, make sense of them, to know the implications, to make judgments based on them, that's a very different thing. And that's sort of where his mental abilities ended."

Peek有回忆历史、数学和地理的事实和模型的才能，但是，Christensen 说，把这些东西利用起来，搞明白原因、讲出道理、理解其中的意义、根据这些事情做出判断，这是完全的两码事，这也是Peek的心智无法达到的地方。

Christensen discovered a rare birth defect, known as agenesis of the corpus callosum, during a brain scan in the 1980s. Peek was missing the thick bundle of millions of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. But a precise explanation for Peek's mix of abilities and disabilities remained elusive.

在20世纪80年代进行的一次脑扫描中，Christensen 发现了Peek患有一种被称作胼胝体发育不全的罕见的先天缺陷，他的左右脑连接的纤维束缺失了。但是对于他才能和行为能力缺失的混合现象仍然没有科学的解释。

"No one knows to this day why, exactly why, people can do things like Kim could do," Christensen says.

Christensen说，“直到今天也没有人知道，确切的知道为什么人们能做Kim做到的事情。”