Notable Individuals
Notable individuals with autism spectrum disorders represent diverse professions such as anthropology, video game design and television production. Some notable artists, authors and musicians and such figures as Richard Borcherds, a Fields Medal winner, Temple Grandin, a food animal handling systems designer and author, Tim Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author and Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Laureate in economics, also have autism spectrum disorders.
There are many published speculative claims about historical figures who may have had autism spectrum disorders. Henry Cavendish, one of history's foremost scientists, may have been autistic. George Wilson, a notable chemist and physician, wrote a book about Cavendish entitled The Life of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, published in 1851. From Wilson's detailed description it seems that Cavendish may have exhibited many classic signs of autism. Fred Volkmar, a psychiatrist and autism expert at the Yale Child Study Center is skeptical; he says, "There is unfortunately a sort of cottage industry of finding that everyone has Asperger's."
Read more about this topic: Sociological And Cultural Aspects Of Autism
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or individuals:
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)