Famous Autistic People
Those of us who are on the Autism spectrum are different. But we are different “good”. Please see the following list of famous people with a confirmed ASD diagnosis.
Sir Anthony Hopkins – Actor
Dan Aykroyd – Comedic actor
Susan Boyle – Singer
Tim Burton – Movie director
Alexis Wineman - First Miss America with ASD and model
Daryl Hannah – Actress & environmental activist
Stephen Fry – Actor
Chris Packham - Naturalist, TV presenter
Elon Musk – Entrepreneur and business magnate
Dr. Michael Burry - Physician, investor and hedge fund manager. The movie “The Big Short” is based on him.
Liane Holliday Willey - Author of “Pretending to be Normal, Asperger Syndrome in the Family”
Travis Meeks - lead singer, guitarist and song writer for acoustic rock band Days of the New
Satoshi Tajiri – Creator of Nintendo’s Pokémon
Dr. Vernon Smith – Nobel Prize Winner, Professor of Economics, Chapman University, essentially invented the field of experimental economics — an achievement for which he won the Nobel Prize in 2002.
Donna Williams - Autism advocate, author and speaker
Alix Generous - Professional speaker, neuroscientist, author, artist, comedian, and media producer
Carly Fulgham - Technology project lead for National Bank and is President of Autism Society of America
Paddy Considine - Actor
Clay Marzo - Professional surfer
Bill Gross - Successful investment manager
Barry Humphries – Actor
Dan Harmon - Writer and creator of the hit show Community
Heather Kuzmich - Model
Courtney Love - Actor, musician and was the wife of Kurt Cobain
Temple Grandin – Animal scientist
Greta Thunberg - Environmental activist
The following Individuals are VERY LIKELY to have been on the spectrum
Albert Einstein – Scientist & Mathematician
Charles Darwin – Naturalist, Geologist, and Biologist
Bobby Fischer – Chess Grandmaster
Bill Gates – Co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation
Thomas Jefferson – Early American politician
Nikola Tesla – Inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist
Andy Warhol – Artist, film director, and producer
Steve Jobs – Founder and former CEO of Apple
Sir Isaac Newton – Mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author
Michelangelo – Sculptor, painter, architect, poet
Henry Ford - Founder of Ford Motor Company
Marie-Curie - Scientist who pioneered research on radioactivity
James Joyce – Novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic
Alfred Kinsey – Sexologist & Biologist
Mark Zuckerberg – Co-founder of Face Book, media magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist
Stanley Kubrick – Film director
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Classical composer
Hans Christian Andersen – Children’s author
Benjamin Banneker – African American Almanac author, surveyor, naturalist, and agrarian
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) – writer of children's fiction, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass
Henry Cavendish – Natural philosopher, scientist, and an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist
Emily Dickinson – Poet
Paul Dirac – Theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century
Dawn Prince-Hughes - PhD, primate anthropologist, ethologist, and author of Songs for the Gorilla Nation
Jerry Newport - American author and mathematical savant, basis of the film Mozart and the Whale
John Elder Robison - author of Look Me in the Eye
Judy Singer - Australian disability rights activist, sociologist who coined term “Neurodiversity”
Alan Turing - Father of modern computing, mathematician and logician, code breaker in WW2
Barbara McClintock – Scientist and cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Francis Galton - Statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician
Daniel Tammet - Essayist, novelist, poet, translator, and savant
Gary Numan - Musician, singer, songwriter, composer, and record producer
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language
William Butler Yeats – Poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature
James Durbin – Musician
Lizzy Clark - Actress and activist
Jerry Seinfeld – Comedian
Adam Young - Singer and songwriter behind Owl City
Given this list of successful people, who wouldn’t want to be on the spectrum!