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Famous with autismMany of the great minds throughout history, the greatest achievers, have been considered to be on the autism spectrum. The world is a better place because of them.
Here are some famous people who have touched the world with their talent. Some have a formal autism diagnosis - others, who lived long before the term “autism” was coined - are generally thought to have been on the spectrum. |
Actors / Entertainers
Daryl Hannah
Daryl Hannah is an American film actress. She is best known for her performances in the films Blade Runner, Splash, Roxanne, Wall Street, Steel Magnolias, and Kill Bill. 
Anne Hegerty (The Governess)
Hegerty is one of the chasers on the game show The Chase 
Sir Anthony Hopkins
The iconic actor was diagnosed with Asperger’s in his 70s. He says there are many positives that can come from the sometimes unusual characteristics often found in those with Asperger’s. ‘I don’t go to parties, I don’t have many friends,’ he said. ‘But I do like people. I do like to get inside their heads. ‘I definitely look at people differently. |
Andy Kaufman
Andy Kaufman was an American entertainer, actor and performance artist. 
Dan Aykroyd Actor, singer, star of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters, and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter 
Wentworth Miller
The "Prison Break" star has revealed he was diagnosed with autism in 2020. Miller, 49, admitted that the news was “a shock but not a surprise.” The Princeton grad wrote that he will now be “re-examining 5 decades of lived experience thru a new lens.” “Oh – this isn’t something I’d change,” he continued. “No. I get – got – immediately [that] being autistic is central to who I am. To everything I’ve achieved/articulated. |
Hannah Gadsby Australian award winning comedian and writer. 
Paddy Considine
The British actor was diagnosed with Aspergers at age 35. Considine is best known for his work with Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz and The World's End. |
Matthew Labyorteaux
American actor who has starred in television and film. He is best known for his role on the hit NBC series Little House on the Prairie 
Barry Humphries
Australian legend and man behind Dame Edna says he was born with Aspergers and enjoys saying whatever is in his head, |
Art
Leonardo da Vinci
Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. |
Michelangelo
Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art |
Vincent van Gogh
was a post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. |
Andy Warhol
was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. |
Directors
Steven Spielberg
Legendary film director, screenwriter, producer, and business magnate. |
Alfred Hitchcock
Great English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. |
Tim Burton
is a film director, His movies include Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, Batman, Planet of the Apes, and more. |
Inventors / Innovators
Nikola Tesla
was a brilliant inventor and engineer. He had a crippling series of phobias, and a sensitivity to light and sound. He was very soft spoken, generally reclusive and fanatically driven by his work. 
Temple Grandin
is an American doctor of animal science and professor at Colorado State University, best-selling author, autistic activist, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behaviour. She redesigned cattle processing methods and revolutionised that industry |
Thomas Edison
was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb 
Benjamin Franklin
One of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. |
Alexander Graham Bell
An eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone 
Satoshi Tajiri
is a Japanese video game designer best known as the creator of Pokemon |
Bill Gates
American business magnate, investor, programmer, inventor and philanthropist. Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company 
Henry Ford
American industrialist, business magnate, and founder of the Ford Motor Company and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production |
Music
Ludwig van Beethoven
was a German composer and pianist. He remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood |
Bob Dylan
Legendary American musician, singer-songwriter, artist, and writer. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades |
Gary Numan
English singer, composer, and musician. |
David Byrne
The Talking Heads Lead Singer has spoken about how he diagnosed himself as being on the autism spectrum. In a 2020 interview, he stated that he felt that his Asperger's Syndrome was a superpower as it allows him to hyperfocus on his creative pursuits 
James Taylor
American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A six-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. |
Courtney Love
American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actress, and artist. She is the frontwoman of alternative rock band Hole. 
John Denver
John Denver, was an American singer-songwriter, record producer, actor, activist, and humanitarian, whose greatest commercial success was as a solo singer |
Craig Nicholls
Australian musician, best known as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the Australian alternative rock band The Vines. |
Susan Boyle
International star known for her amazing voice. In 2013, she revealed that she was diagnosed with Aspergers a year earlier, and now feels a lot more relaxed about herself. |
Politics / Social Issues
Tim Fischer
Australian politician, he served as Deputy Prime Minister in the Howard Government from 1996 to 1999. |
Thomas Jefferson
was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. |
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Science
Albert Einstein
Scientist considered one of the greatest minds that ever lived. 
Alan Turing
was the remarkable man responsible for cracking the NAZI code that helped the Allies to win the war. |
Sir Isaac Newton
was an English physicist and mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution 
Henry Cavendish is perhaps one of the most important scientists in history. A natural philosopher, chemist, and physicist, Cavendish is perhaps most famous as the discoverer of hydrogen.
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Charles Darwin
English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory 
Paul Dirac has repeatedly been referred to as one of the most significant and influential physicists of the 20th century.
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Carl Jung
Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious 
Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of a few major companies including SpaceX and Tesla, He is one of the richest people in the world.
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Sport
Lionel Messi
Regarded as one of the best football players in the world. |
Clay Marzo is a professional surfer known for his unique "double-jointed" style of turns and spins.
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Bobby Fischer, the chess grandmaster and World Chess Champion, is said to have had Asperger’s Syndrome. Fischer was known to be extremely intense, and did not relate well to others due to a lack of friendships and poor social abilities.
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Writers
Samuel Clemens
Better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called "the Great American Novel |
George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Most famous for the novels, 1984, and Animal Farm.
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Hans Christian Andersen
was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales |
Virginia Woolf was an English writer, and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century
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Isaac Asimov
was an author and professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books |
Emily Dickinson
was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life |
Jane Austen
was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature |
Charles M. Schulz
was an American cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Peanuts. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, cited as a major influence by many later cartoonists |
Tim Page
is a writer, editor, music critic, producer and professor. He is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic |
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer |
George Bernard Shaw
Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. |
Holly Smale
English author most well known for the Geek Girl series. |
