Temple Grandin

Born August 29, 1947, in Boston, MA; daughter of Richard McCurdy (a real estate agent) and Eustacia (a writer, singer, and actress) Grandin. Education: Franklin Pierce College, B.A. (with honors), 1970; Arizona State University, M.S., 1975; University of Illinois-Urbana, Ph.D., 1989. Politics: Republican. Religion: Episcopalian. Avocational Interests: Star Trek. . Memberships: Autism Society of America (member of board of directors, 1988-92), American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society of Animal Science, American Society of Agricultural Consultants (member of board of directors, 1981-83), American Society of Agricultural Engineers, American Meat Institute (supplier member), American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists, National Institute of Animal Agriculture. Addresses: Office: Department of Animal Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.

(With Margaret M. Scariano) Emergence: Labeled Autistic (autobiography), Arena Press (Novato, CA), 1986 , Warner Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism (autobiography), foreword by Oliver Sacks, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1995, 25th anniversary edition published as Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism, Vintage Books (New York, NY), 2020.

(With Kate Duffy) Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism, Austism Asperger (Shawnee Mission, KS), 2004 .

(With Sean Barron) The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries through the Unique Perspectives of Autism, edited by Veronica Zysk, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2005.

(With Catherine Johnson) Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, Scribner (New York, NY), 2005.

The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger's, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2008, revised edition, 2011, 5th edition published as The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism, 2020.

(With Catherine Johnson) Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (New York, NY), 2009.

(With Diane M. Kennedy and Rebecca S. Banks) Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 2011.

(With Richard Panek) The Autistic Brain: Thinking across the Spectrum, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Boston, MA), 2013.

(With Debra Moore) The Loving Push: How Parents and Professionals Can Help Spectrum Kids Become Successful Adults, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2015.

Temple Grandin's Guide to Working with Farm Animals: Safe, Humane Livestock Handling Practices for the Small Farm, Storey Publishing (North Adams, MA), 2017.

(With Betsy Lerner) Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create like an Inventor, illustrated by Thibaud Herem, Philomel Books (New York, NY), 2018 .

(With Betsy Lerner) The Outdoor Scientist: The Wonder of Observing the Natural World, illustrated by Thibaud Herem, Philomel Books (New York, NY), 2021.

(With Debra Moore) Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets for Helping Kids on the Spectrum, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2021.

(With Betsy Lerner) Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2022.

Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), 1998, 2nd edition (with Mark J. Deesing), Academic Press (London, England), 2014.

Livestock Handling and Transport, CAB International (Wallingford, England), 1993, 2nd edition, CABI (New York, NY), 2000, 4th edition, CABI (Boston, MA), 2014, 5th edition, 2019.

Improving Animal Welfare: A Practical Approach, CAB International (Cambridge, MA), 2010, 2nd edition, CABI (Boston, MA), 2015, 3rd edition, 2021 .

(With Martin Whiting) Are We Pushing Animals to Their Biological Limits? Welfare and Ethical Implications, CABI (Boston, MA), 2018 .

(With Michael Cockram) The Slaughter of Farmed Animals: Practical Ways of Enhancing Animal Welfare, CABI (Boston, MA), 2020.

Also author of Recommended Animal Handling Guidelines for Meat Packers, American Meat Institute (Washington, DC); coauthor of Food Industry Animal Welfare Report, 2002.

Contributor of introduction to Temple Grandin: The Stories I Tell My Friends, by Anita Lesko, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2018. Contributor of forewords to Children with Autism: A Parents' Guide, edited by Michael D. Powers, Woodbine House (Bethesda, MD), 2000; Asperger's on the Job: Must-Have Advice for People with Asperger's or High Functioning Autism, and Their Employers, Educators, and Advocates, by Rudy Simone, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2010; How to Teach Life Skills to Kids with Autism or Asperger's, by Jennifer McIlwee Myers, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2010; Horse Sanctuary, by Allison Milionis, Universe (New York, NY), 2013; The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse: Building a Humane Chicken-Processing Unit to Strengthen Your Local Food System, by Ali Berlow, Storey Pub. (North Adams, MA), 2013; Drawing Autism, by Jill Mullin, Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2014; Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior by Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., edited by Stephen M. Edelson, 50th anniversary updated edition, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (Philadelphia, PA), 2015; College for Students with Disabilities: We Do Belong, edited by Pavan John Antony and Stephen M. Shore, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (Philadelphia, PA), 2015; (with John Ratey) Autism and the Stress Effect: A 4-Step Lifestyle Approach to Transform Your Child's Health, Happiness and Vitality, by Theresa Hamlin, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (Philadelphia, PA), 2016; Teaching Pre-employment Skills to 14-17-Year-Olds: The Autism Works Now! Method, by Joanne Lara and Susan Osborne, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (Philadelphia, PA), 2017; Animal Welfare Science, Husbandry and Ethics: The Evolving Story of Our Relationship with Farm Animals, by Mark Fisher, 5M Publishing (Sheffield, England), 2018; The Spectrum Girl's Survival Guide: How to Grow Up Awesome and Autistic, by Siena Castellon, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (London, England), 2020.

Contributor to Teaching Children with Autism: Strategies to Enhance Communication and Socialization, edited by Kathleen Ann Quill, Delmar/Cengage Learning (New York, NY), 1995; Animal Welfare and Meat Science, CABI (New York, NY), 1998; and Diagnosing Jefferson: Evidence of a Condition That Guided His Beliefs, Behavior, and Personal Association, by Norm Ledgin, Future Horizons (Arlington, TX), 2000.

Contributor of articles to periodicals and professional journals, including Agri-Practice, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, Beef, Journal of Animal Science, Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Meat and Poultry, Professional Scientist, Veterinary Medicine, and Zoo Biology.

Highly accomplished inventor and animal scientist Temple Grandin has designed numerous pieces of livestock-handling equipment that provide for the humane treatment of livestock on farms and in slaughterhouses. Her inventions are used worldwide by farmers and meat packers, and in 2002 it was estimated that more than half of the cattle in North America were prepared for market through use of her “Stairway to Heaven” system of stress-free slaughter. What is remarkable about Grandin, other than the fact that she is an award-winning innovator in a male-dominated field, is that she has lived with autism since birth and has found ways to succeed not despite it, but because of it. Her autobiographies Emergence: Labeled Autistic, which she wrote with Margaret M. Scariano, and Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism chronicle her life and shed light on the autistic mind. Grandin's other publications—more than 300 journal articles and numerous books—deal with livestock behavior and livestock facility design as well as autism. Her most recent book on the latter topic is The Autistic Brain: Thinking across the Spectrum, published in 2013. Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, has been feted internationally for her pioneering work in farm-animal welfare and in autism advocacy, was named to Time magazine's list of “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2010, and has been the subject of numerous articles, books, and television productions, including the 2010 HBO biopic, Temple Grandin.

Grandin has achieved a remarkable renown for someone in her line of work. Since many people with autism cannot effectively articulate what they feel and experience, Grandin's candid view of her situation has helped scholars studying the disorder. She has not been satisfied just to speak about autism, however, but is engaged in new projects and research. When asked for her advice to other autistic persons, Grandin told a contributor to the Harvard Brain website: “People respect talent. Make yourself so good at something that people will hire you to do it. It has to be something there's a need for.”

Diagnosed as autistic at the age of two and a half, Grandin, like many autistic children, hated to be held, and she would stiffen her body to fend off her mother's hugs; she shunned others, preferring solitude, and was given to fits of rage; she also was limited in her verbal skills and was easily startled by noise and keenly aware of odors. Fortunately, however, she was surrounded by nurturing parents, aunts, and teachers who devoted themselves to her instruction. Her mother enrolled her in private schools and coached her in reading while encouraging the girl's creativity and imagination.

As she grew older, Grandin's verbal skills improved, but she exhibited the obsessive behavior often exhibited by autistics, behavior she found tormenting. She became easily fixated, for example, on rotating objects. She once heard a minister quote the biblical passage: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved,” and from then on the literal- minded Grandin sought out special doors. Her penchant for doors brought her much-needed peace; when she found them, they led to places of comfort for her troubled mind. The author describes her chronic anxiety level as akin to that of a person being mugged in an urban subway.

One summer, while visiting her aunt's cattle ranch, Grandin experienced something that would determine her life's work. Grandin was fascinated by the squeeze chute that was used to hold animals still while they were inoculated. Desiring hugs, but fearful of the pain caused her by human touch, she tried out the machine on herself, while her aunt manned the controls. Grandin found this mechanical hug exhilarating and relaxing. She subsequently designed a similar machine for herself, which she keeps in her home to provide stimulation and relaxation. Schools and institutes for autistic children have since implemented Grandin's squeeze chute in their treatment programs. The machine has also proven beneficial to children with other anomalies, such as hyperactivity.

Grandin's experience in the squeeze machine also gave her insight into the way animals feel, for they, also, live in a visual world and retreat from human touch. Such insights into the animals she has observed have caused her to feel most at home when with cattle and to become one of the foremost developers of gentle livestock-handling equipment. All of her designs are intended to lessen fear in animals and minimize their pain, and Grandin has been instrumental in the development of improved, animal-friendly dip-vats, stockyards, research laboratories, ramps at slaughter plants, and slaughter techniques, as well as numerous other products or methods dealing with cattle. Such industry giants as McDonald's and Burger King seek out her expertise, and even more remarkably, she has been cited for her work on animal welfare by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Forbes contributor Ann Marsh declared: “Thanks to Temple Grandin, meat-eaters can be fairly certain the animals they consume met a placid death. … That one person—a woman—has won over so many players in the independently managed and very male meat-processing industry is remarkable.”

Grandin's accomplishments and life with autism are documented in her autobiographies. Emergence seeks to promote understanding of autism and its disturbing symptoms—especially the autistic's tendency to avoid touch—and describes Grandin's joy at her discovery of the squeeze machine. Commenting in Psychology Today, Paul Chance praised Emergence, writing that the author “has provided us with a fascinating look at autism from the inside.” Anecdotes from Grandin's life can also be found via the interviews in Anita Lesko's book Temple Grandin: The Stories I Tell My Friends, to which the celebrated subject provides an introduction.

Unlike Emergence, Grandin wrote Thinking in Pictures without the assistance of a professional writer, thus giving readers greater insight into her thought patterns. As the title indicates, Thinking in Pictures focuses greatly on the author's ability to visualize, which has resulted in her success as a livestock facility designer.

Grandin's explanations of her visual techniques fascinated reviewer Stacey D'Erasmo, who wrote in Voice Literary Supplement: “Grandin has replaced the teleology of autobiography with something much closer to her heart: a diagram, in this case a diagram of her own mind. Slowly and patiently she explains it, taking care to be thorough: this is how it works, this is what caused how it works, here is the research, there are the consequences. She is a sober and literal architect. … Her great gift, as the title of her book suggests, is her ability to visualize, to think in pictures.”

Grandin blends her twin passions of writing about animals and about autism in her 2005 work, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. Working with Catherine Johnson—who is a specialist in the neuropsychiatry and the brain as well as the mother of autistic children—Grandin uses both her professional work dealing with farm animals and her own experiences as a high-functioning autistic person to argue that autism can make us understand more clearly animal behavior. She contends that the lack of language ability caused by autism in ways reflects the situation with animals. Thus, animals, like autistics, do not transform sights, sounds, and smells into abstractions such as thought and language. Instead, animals, like autistic humans, process these sense impressions discretely, experiencing the world as a plethora of images rather than a unified whole. For Grandin, animals are, indeed, “autistic savants whose intelligence is unseen by most people,” according to Library Journal reviewer Alvin Hutchinson. The author employs not only her personal experiences, but also her research and that of others in the field. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Polly Morrice noted of Grandin's central thesis: “In arguing for an animal-autism connection, Grandin sides with brain researchers who link many autistic symptoms to problems with the frontal lobes. In people with autism, she notes, these areas are either abnormal or they receive scrambled messages from other parts of the brain—or both. In contrast, the frontal lobes of animal brains are simply undeveloped; normal animals function somewhat like off-kilter, autistic humans.”

Writing in Booklist, Nancy Bent termed Animals in Translation a “fascinating book [that] will teach readers to see as animals see.” Hutchinson also found this a “provocative title.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that the authors use a “simple, lucid style to synthesize a vast amount of research” in fields including psychology, biology, and neurology. The same reviewer further dubbed Animals in Translation a “lively and absorbing look at the world from animals’ point of view.”

Working again with Johnson, Grandin published the 2009 work Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals, a book that explores optimum animal and human interaction. Grandin takes as a starting point that animals are not only conscious beings, but that they also have feelings and needs. The authors include among these anger, fear, panic, curiosity, and play, all of which animals share with humans. Grandin looks at a wide range of animals, including wildlife at the zoo, pets such as cats and dogs, and livestock and poultry, and argues that humans should understand the various feelings and drives that animals experience in order to provide these animals with what she terms a healthy mental life. Thus, Grandin's larger purpose is in demonstrating how human-animal encounters can be more interactive than simply reactive.

Writing in Herizons, R.J. Stevenson felt that Animals Make Us Human is a “convincing argument recommended to everyone responsible for, or interested in, the care of animals.” Stevenson further lauded the “authors’ considerable acuity, experience and knowledge.” Reviewing the work in Library Journal, Kyrille Goldbeck felt that despite a certain lack of objectivity in some of the conclusions, “readers will be able to glean new perspectives about animal welfare.” Higher praise came from a Publishers Weekly reviewer who found the book to be “packed with fascinating insights, unexpected observations and a wealth of how-to tips.”

Grandin's 2013 book, The Autistic Brain, coauthored with science writer Richard Panek, provides an “up-to-the-minute assessment of the features of autism and the factors that may be contributing to the disorder,” according to Smithsonian contributor Chloe Schama. Here Grandin focuses on twenty-first century approaches to diagnosis and treatment of autism, from brain imaging to DNA sequencing. Grandin also argues that professionals in the field and those who have autism should not focus simply on its negative aspects, but also on the strengths that each autistic person might have. This would better enable autistic people to build those strengths into skills and into possible careers.

For a Kirkus Reviews critic the book provides an “illuminating look at how neuroscience opens a window into the mind.” Other reviewers focused on the authors' style and message. Library Journal contributor Terry Lamperski noted that “Grandin's subject matter is quite technical, but the writing is clear and understandable even for nonscientific readers.” Schama similarly found the work both “personable and accessible,” while Booklist reviewer June Sawyers termed The Autistic Brain an “important and ultimately optimistic work.” In a similar vein, Science News contributor Meghan Rosen felt that “Grandin drive[s] home an encouraging message: Instead of defining kids by their deficits, she suggests, we should all work with them to uncover their strengths.”

Grandin teamed up with Betsy Lerner to write a pair of books about creative and scientific thinking for middle-grade readers. Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create like an Inventor combines a history of inventions, an accounting of the author's inventive mind-set, and exercises to encourage inventiveness in young readers. Looking back at world-changing inventions by the likes of Gutenberg, the Wright brothers, and many others, Grandin explores the ways that creative ideas, constructive thinking, and hands-on experimentation play into the development of inventions. Along the way, she adds insight as to how her autism has enabled her to take unique perspectives and tap into her creative spirit, and twenty-five craft activities help get kids' hands working and minds churning.

Voice of Youth Advocates reviewer Walter Hogan found Calling All Minds “both practical and inspirational,” while Andrew Medlar added in Booklist that “the myriad topics and personal text are certainly mind-expanding.” Noting that the ambitious mix of history, science, and memoir makes for an engaging read, a Kirkus Reviews writer hailed Calling All Minds as an “impassioned call to look at the world in unique ways with plenty of practical advice on how to cultivate a curious, inquiring, imaginative mind.”

Grandin also enlisted Lerner in writing The Outdoor Scientist: The Wonder of Observing the Natural World, in which she takes readers on a tour through scenes and aspects of the great outdoors—the beach, the woods, rocks, birds, the night sky, and more—recounting ways that she and other scientists have engaged with nature. Included are instructions for forty do-it-yourself projects and investigations for young readers. A Kirkus Reviews writer affirmed that The Outdoor Scientist “demonstrates how curiosity can propel and fulfill a human being to learn all kinds of things,” of the sort that “a nature- loving child will be thrilled to discover.”

Geared toward parents and caretakers is Grandin and psychologist Debra Moore's Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets for Helping Kids on the Spectrum. The guiding principle behind the ethos and approaches heralded here is that children with autism benefit from having their individuality recognized and celebrated by caretakers who focus on their fortes and encourage their growth. They suggest, for example, that declining to mention a child's autism when first meeting others helps discourage peers and other parents from defining the child by their condition. Concerning early evaluations, the authors note that children should be assessed in stress-free environments—without excessive sense stimuli, for example—to let their true level of development be revealed. While affirming that consistency in home life, daily schedules, and relationships is good for autistic children, the authors also explain the importance of trying new things and finding hobbies with connections to real-world skills and situations. The volume is peppered with illustrative case studies as well as quick tips, references, and handy checklists.

A Kirkus Reviews writer praised the “clear, emphatic language” used by the authors to make “a convincing case for changing the outlook from a ‘disability mentality’ to one of nurturing interests, talents, and strengths.” The Kirkus Reviews writer deemed the work a “welcome, instructive handbook.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer affirmed that readers will “appreciate the straightforward language, the direct approach to dealing with challenging situations, and the authors' focus on” children's uniqueness and potential. The reviewer dubbed Navigating Autism a “valuable resource.”