George Church, Dyslexic Harvard Scientist, Personal Genome Project

"Everything is a subject of his intellectual curiosity, including himself." - friend, about George Church



"I'm a champion for personal differences," Church says. "I have no sympathy for drug companies that can't figure out how to make personalized medicine. We could generalize that to 'All society should be much more personalized.' Anytime you see somebody keeping a secret, that's symptomatic that something's wrong with the society around them. That means there's discrimination or worse."

Church grew up dyslexic, developed narcolepsy in his teens and survived a heart attack. Somehow he found the wherewithal to invent technologies that make it possible to sequence DNA. Being narcoleptic means that he falls asleep five times a day in meetings, even as he runs one of the largest labs at Harvard and serves on advisory boards for numerous companies. "There are a few genetic traits that make people feel sorry for you," he says, "and there are some, like narcolepsy, at which people take personal offense unless you tell them in advance."

To read more:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0427/020-biofuels-biotech-genetics-ideas-opinions.html

Dyslexic Screenwriter and Film Director of Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie

"By the time I found out I was dyslexic, I didn't give a hoot. Even when IQ tests showed that I was bright, I wasn't interested. I found out so early that I couldn't do schoolwork that I was just interested in being disruptive." - Guy Ritchie

Guy Ritchie eventually made good and now his Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law set a box office record for a Christmas day opening ($24.9 million) and won critical acclaim. Many are struck by the differences from the old Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films - but Ritchie's seem more faithful to the original stories. From The Times: "It was at boarding school, says Ritchie, that he first got a taste for Holmes. Between the ages of six and eight, they would, for good behaviour, get narrated stories piped into the dormitory. 'I built up a mental image from back then.' "




Guy Ritchie
Guy Ritchie picture

Dyslexic NYTimes Best Selling Author of Political Thrillers, Vince Flynn

"I began to think about writing which is a little unusual because I'm dyslexic. I never got better than a 'C' in English class in high school or college. Never thought I'd be a writer..." - Vince Flynn

Vince Flynn novels are taken so seriously by intelligence professionals worldwide that a high-ranking CIA official told his people, “I want you to read Flynn’s books and start thinking about how we can more effectively wage this war on terror.”

From a long interview:

"...because you can’t actually write well, and you don’t do well on tests, the way you make up for things, and the way you get by and don’t get failed is you learn people skills. You learn how to suck up to your teacher. You learn how to verbalize in class, because you can’t write or read. And you learn ways around all the obstacles while the other kids just tend to go along with the conveyor belt. And the conveyor belt doesn’t work for us. You’ve got to find different ways to do things...."



Interview
Wikipedia: Vince Flynn

Dyslexic Heart Surgeon, Inventor, CEO, Toby Cosgrove M.D.

"We're not very good at the scholastic stuff, but we see other things that are different, and that's a big advantage." - Toby Cosgrove, M.D., CEO Cleveland Clinics


From Leadership Powerhouse:
"Cosgrove, an international legend in cardio thoracic surgery, holder of 18 patents, author of a book and 400 journal articles, and surgeon of more than 18,000 cases, is dyslexic. He had been a C and D student in high school... Barely squeaked by on his entrance exams. And he had been accepted at the last medical school to which he had applied."

Cosgrove shared many common dyslexic talents - a spatial / kinesthetic wiz, an oustanding on-the-spot problem solver, and cognitive and people-person strengths to enable him to lead and mange a large business such as the Cleveland Clinic Hospital, one of the top ranked hospitals in the nation.

From I Speak of Dreams:

"At the Clinic, Cosgrove's inventiveness so far has manifested itself in myriad innovations for surgical procedures. His unique view of the work allowed him to spy a solution for a flexible clamp in a bicycle gear and to see an embroidery hoop as inspiration for a ring used to repair heart valves.

In surgery, he said, dyslexia is an advantage because it favors spatial relationships.

Cosgrove didn't know he was dyslexic until he was 32, when he read the New York Times aloud to a teacher he was dating. As he struggled to pronounce some of the words, she put a name to the learning difficulties he had faced since he was a young boy.

These days, Cosgrove can rely on his assistants for help with spelling and sentence structure. But in his youth, a mix of serendipity, moxie and determination helped him jump one hurdle to the next Cosgrove struggled in public schools in his hometown of Watertown, N.Y., and studied hard for D's in college French at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., his father's alma mater.

He did so poorly on the standardized tests required for medical admission that he credits special circumstances for getting into the University of Virginia's medical school, the only one of 13 schools that accepted his application."

In the video below, check out ideas he implemented in his hospital system to keep down escalating healthcare costs.






Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity: Toby Cosgrove M.D.

Dyslexic Naturalist, Wildlife Illustrator, and Field Guide Author John ('Jack') Muir Laws

"Don't ask a dyslexic how to spell," he says. It turns out Laws has never read a book cover to cover. "Not even a novel," he says. Words are a jumble to him. To get through school, he listened to books on tape and textbooks recorded for the blind. This did not stop him from getting his undergraduate degree at Berkeley and his master's in wildlife biology from the University of Montana; he earns his living teaching classes on natural history, scientific illustration, and field sketching.

Most field guides are organized around the expert's division of life forms into their taxonomic, evolutionary groups - all gulls with gulls, all hawks with hawks, for example, which requires the searcher to know where to look in the book. But Laws has devised a clever way to organize his field guide by color. You see a greenish bird. You go to the color key and flip to "Green Birds," and the guide lists birds whose dominant, most eye-catching color is green - combining Anna's hummingbirds, green-tailed towhees, and Lewis's woodpecker on the same page. It is a fast, intuitive, accessible way to do snappy field identifications.

Laws painted every wildflower in his book from sketches and paintings in the field. The same with most of the birds, except the great horned owl, which he kept missing. "We have this idea that all robins, for example, look the same," says Laws. "But they don't. Any more than all collies look alike or all humans. It's because we're not looking hard enough."

From the Washington Post article on Laws:

"He is an absolutely wonderful misspeller," says his father, Robert Laws, a retired San Francisco attorney. "I think his dyslexia is the key."

Meaning a key to his book. "Maybe that's what makes me who I am," Laws says. "If I had the option, I don't think I would cure it." Because maybe his dyslexia helps him see more, better, or differently. "

Laws exemplifies many dyslexic gifts - like keen powers of multisensory observation, artistic ability, and scientific analysis. We liked what he said about collies not all being alike - it's a dyslexic talent too to question assumptions like that in the planning of his field guide. Laws also shows some of that dyslexic transdisciplinary thinking style as he shows members of his wildlife class how to 'draw' bird song.




A short video from Laws' class on Butterfly sketching here:

Dyslexic Monster Maker / 6x Academy Award Winner Rick Baker

"Oh, I do not finish everything I start, that is for sure. I am a little dyslexic and have more difficulty trouble remembering passwords and typing in serial numbers as in actually creating interesting stuff. I hate losing work and should probably back up more frequently. I get carried away trying to do one more thing and one more thing and sometimes I get into trouble." - Rick Baker

In time for Halloween, today's spotlight is on special effects artist Rick Baker. The video is an infomercial for a software that features 6x-Academy Award winner Rick Baker. Baker is the special effects artist who recreated the werewolf that Michael Jackson turned into for Thriller, special effects characters for Star Wars, Men in Black, Nutty Professor, etc.



Interview with Rick Baker: http://www.pixologic.com/interview/archive/rick-baker/
http://www.luxology.com/community/profiles/rbaker/page2.aspx

Dyslexic Molecular Biologist Carol Greider Wins 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine

“It's going to be hard work whether you think it's fun or not, so you might as well have fun while you're doing the hard work.” - Carol Greider, PhD, 2009 Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine



Her application package was a bit unusual, Greider says. “I had great research experience, great letters of recommendation, and outstanding grades, but I had poor GREs.” Although she did not know it growing up, Greider suffers from dyslexia, which affected her scores on standardized tests. Only two schools—the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) and the University of California, Berkeley— offered her an interview..."

Carol Greider's family history has some overlaps with others in this blog - including physics in the family (Greider's father is a physics professor). Greider has said an enjoyment of mechanistic thinking drove her to choose biochemistry over other scientific fields.



Thanks Tom West for NYT addition info:

"My parents were scientists. But I wasn’t the sort of child who did science fairs. One of the things I was thinking about today is that as a kid I had dyslexia. I had a lot of trouble in school and was put into remedial classes. I thought that I was stupid." - Dr. Carol Greider

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/13conv.html

Carol Greider Wins Nobel Prize in Medicine Despite Dyslexia
Carol Greider PhD