Nasa tries to figure out real-life Rain Man's brain Robin McKie, science editor Sunday December 11, 2005 The Observer (UK) It took Kim Peek just over an hour to read Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. Four months later, when asked to give the name of the book's Russian radio operator, Peek quoted the entire relevant passage. It was a prodigious feat. Yet for Peek - the real-life 'savant' on whom Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man is based - such recall only gives a glimpse of his powers. He knows 9,000 books off by heart; he...