“Solomon V. Shereshevsky: The Great Russian Mnemonist”, 2013-09 ():
[see later 2017 investigation] A biographical sketch is given of Solomon V. Shereshevsky, a man gifted with exceptional memory skills who became famous after the publication of Aleksandr R. Luria’s book The Mind of a Mnemonist, in 1968.
…Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky was born in 1896 in Torzhok, a small town 145 miles north of Moscow, to a Jewish family. His father owned a bookshop, his mother was an educated woman. He had several brothers and sisters, some of whom are said to have been gifted people (but we do not know in what field). Remarkable memory skills seem to have been present also in his father, while his mother could quote long passages from the Torah. Following primary school and after his musical ability had been ascertained, Shereshevsky was enrolled at a music school. He could have become a proficient violinist, if an ear disease and the resultant hearing deficit had not interrupted his training. Then, he found a work as a reporter on a Moscow newspaper. As it is known, the editor was surprised that his reporter, differently from colleagues, did not take any notes about whatever assignments he received in the morning for the rest of the day. The editor suggested to Shereshevsky that he should have psychological testing for this unusual performance.
…While the mnemonist was conversing with Vygotsky, he once remarked to the psychologist: “What a crumbly, yellow voice you have”. The same type of synaesthetic association was made in connection with the film director Sergey M. Eisenstein: “Listening to him, it was”, Shereshevsky noted in 1951, “as though a flame with fibers protruding from it was advancing right toward me. I got so interested in his voice, I couldn’t follow what he was saying” (1968b, pg4).
…In December 1937, Shereshevsky noted: “All the jobs I had were simply work I was doing in the mean time” (1968b, pg58). So he was a reporter, a broker, a vaudeville actor, a herbal therapist, and it seems that in the last period of his life he was a taxi driver too. Probably, he had the most success when he gave evidence of his great memory capacity in public performances. In the above mentioned film Zagadky pamyati one can see many bills announcing these shows.
Shereshevsky married and had one son. He died in Moscow in 1958. Luria concluded: “Indeed, one would be hard put to say which was more real for him: the world of imagination in which he lived, or the world of reality in which he was but a temporary guest” (196856yab, pg59).