Visual Families and Nobel Prizes

 Note: The following is an excerpt from Chapter Eight of Seeing What Others Cannot See: The Hidden Advantages of Visual Thinkers and Differently Wired Brains, by Thomas G. West, Prometheus Books, 2017, pages 151- 170. 

 

Chapter Eight

 

VISUAL FAMILIES AND NOBEL PRIZES

 

 

NOBEL PRIZES IN THE OLD TRADITION

 

“I didn’t expect [a Nobel Prize] at all,” he said, “in part because of the nature of the work. There was less science [and more engineering] in it than the things customarily honored by the prizes.” This is the observation of Jack S. Kilby (of Texas Instruments) co-inventor of the integrated circuit, on being notified of his award. 

 

The Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded at the same time to Alan J. Heeger (UC–Santa Barbara) and Hideki Shirakawa (University of Tsukuba) for their work on conductive polymers also reflected the recognition of broad effects rather than pure science. “We’re very excited,” said Daryle H. Busch of the American Chemical Society, “because this award is in the old tradition. That is, it was given for work that has a very substantial impact on society.”

 

The shift back to an earlier tradition by the Nobel Prize committee may have reflected a growing recognition in the larger world of the deep value of applied work of broad impact as opposed to the highly theoretical work of relatively low impact that has commanded such high prestige in recent decades. Thus, these changes might be read as the small beginnings of a larger and more gradual swing back toward a greater respect for the less theoretical and more practical—for the hand, for the eye, and for image building in the brain. 

For some time the major contributions of visual thinkers have been eclipsed in many fields by theoretical approaches that do not lend them- selves to pictures or images or imagined models or hands-on manipulation. For a long time, we have been told with confidence that visual approaches were old-fashioned and somehow primitive. Modern scientists and mathematicians, we have been told, did not need images. Pictures and diagrams were for nonprofessionals, laypersons, and children. 

 

But we may now see that sometimes things could be going back the other way. With new visualization technologies—and a new sense of missed opportunities with the old, narrow, specialist methods— researchers in many fields are becoming aware that in order to do really creative work, they may need to go back to visual approaches once again. So, perhaps, we come back again to the place where the most advanced and creative work is done by visual thinkers using visual methods and new visual technologies. Once again, pictures are not only for children. 

 

REASSESSING VISUAL ROOTS AT GREEN COLLEGE 

 

Quiet indicators of these powerful changes are beginning, here and there, over recent years, to gain broader attention. In one instance, on a bleak and rainy Saturday, a small but historic conference took place in England at Green College, Oxford University. With observations that will gladden the hearts of many strong visual thinkers, the conference presentations focused on high-level achievements in the arts and the sciences within families over several generations. Titled “Genius in the Genes?” and sponsored by the Arts Dyslexia Trust, the conference included an associated exhibition of art and scientific work from eight families. All of these families showed evidence of high visual and spatial talents along with troubles with words. Several members of each family were also dyslexic.  

 

In a view that is contrary to most of the generally held beliefs in educational testing and educational reform, the speakers indicated that a very high level of creative achievement in the sciences has often come from the neurological resources linked to success in the arts. The speakers also indicated that some of those who have excelled most in their scientific achievements are from families with varied visual and spatial talents— ones that often have had trouble with words (and where some members may be dyslexic). As we are becoming increasingly aware, there does seem to be a kind of trade-off—very early brain development (largely con- trolled by genetic factors), seems to gain unusual visual and spatial profi- ciencies at the cost of some lack of proficiency in some language system. 

 

Consequently, there may be various family members who have special strengths in art, design, computer graphics, visual mathematics, mechanics, or engineering—yet may have unusual difficulties with reading, spelling, arithmetic, rote memorization, or foreign languages. It is all part of a familiar pattern—which is continually repeated with variations, generation after generation. The pattern seems to continue through families, parents to children, always different in details, but frequently similar in the overall pattern of high visual strengths with notable lan- guage difficulties in some form. 

 

ONE FAMILY—FOUR NOBEL PRIZES 

 

One of the speakers at the Green College conference was Patience Thomson, the former head of Fairley House School for dyslexics in London and later a publisher (Barrington Stoke) of “books for reluctant readers.” She spoke of her family in which there are many visual-spatial occupations in the arts and the sciences and no less than four Nobel Prize winners. She explained that all of the prize-winning achievements had a high visual component. Thus, in a most remarkable example of the larger pattern, in this extended family, the exceptional visual and spatial capabilities that had contributed to so much creativity and innovation seemed to have been balanced by problems in other specific areas. 

 

On her side of the family, the Nobel laureates were her grandfather Sir William Bragg (1862–1942) and her father, Sir Lawrence Bragg (1890–1971). They received a joint prize for x-ray crystallography. On her husband’s (David Thomson) side, the Nobel laureates were his grand- father Sir Joseph ( J. J.) Thomson (1856–1940), for discovery of the electron, and his father, Sir George Thomson (1892–1925), for discovery of electron diffraction. 

 

She spoke of her famous father and the other outstanding scientists in her family, her gifted children, and the way the power of visual-spatial thinking has colored their lives and has contributed to many of the considerable achievements of the family. Along with the scientists among the Braggs and the Thomsons, there have been several artists, architects, TV producers, computer experts, and one actor, along with a number of other occupations for which the role of visual-spatial proficiencies is not so obvious. 

 

However, over five generations of this family, with many children and grandchildren, there have been a number who have been dyslexic or mildly dyslexic. At the time, she reported, there are many great grandchildren who are still “too young to tell.” Along with the award medals and family photographs, the exhibition showed drawings and paintings by family members, including a self-portrait by Sir Lawrence Bragg. (An interesting detail: most self-portraits show the painter looking at himself—whereas Lawrence Bragg arranged his mirrors to show himself looking off to one side. Clearly, notable innovations at every turn, large or small.) 

 

An indicator of the enduring importance of Lawrence Bragg’s work is that when James Watson wrote The Double Helix—about his discovery of the structure of DNA with Francis Crick—he asked Bragg (their boss at the time) to write the foreword, partly to allay critics of the controversial book. The use of x-ray crystallography pioneered by the two Braggs was fundamental to understanding the structure of this molecule that carries all genetic information—and it has been an essential technique ever since. 

 

THE ART IN MEDICINE 

 

Another speaker at the Oxford conference was Terence Ryan, MD. Dr. Ryan described the story of “Doctor X”—who turned out to be himself. He recounted his own life story as a man who was a leader in his field of medicine (dermatology) but had substantial difficulties with his early education and his medical education because of his dyslexia. For example, with exams, he would often recognize accurately symptoms and conditions but would sometimes come up with the wrong Latin name. 

 

However, in his practice and clinical observations, he found that he could be a leader and innovator because he could recognize disease pat- terns that his medical colleagues could not easily see. He suspected that he had greater powers of visual observation than many of his associates. He also thought that his dyslexia helped him to be more flexible and innovative in his thinking, coming up with theoretical approaches quite different from others in his field. 

 

As an example of the creative inverted thinking that dyslexics some- times exhibit, he described one of his own theories, one that is still controversial. Generally, it is taught that skin grows as its lowest layers and older cells allow themselves to rise to the top layers, where they slough off at the surface. He explained that from his point of view, cells would be unlikely to allow themselves to automatically rise to the top layers—as they would thereby be moving away from their food supply in the bottom layers. Consequently, he uses the novel alternative explanation that the cells that rise to the top are in fact inadvertently pushed out of the way by other cells that are in fact making their own way down toward the nutrient supplies in the bottom layers (near the blood supply). In many ways the final result is the same, but the actual process is quite different. Consequently, his associates see him as one of the important “lateral” thinkers in the field. 

 

In spite of his extensive educational difficulties, his medical career has been highly successful. Now retired, he has been Clinical Professor of Dermatology at Oxford University and Vice Warden of one of the Oxford Colleges. He has been president of many of the national and international professional societies in his field, as well as being active in establishing regional dermatology training centers in Africa and Central America. He is “not easily confined by definitions,” which has helped him break new ground and produce nearly four hundred publications. As a hobby, Dr. Ryan does colorful flower paintings—often exploiting visual ambiguities in which it may not be clear whether a garden stair goes up or down or whether a flower is inside or outside a frame. 

 

A VILLAGE OF MILLERS AND CLOCK MAKERS 

 

The Green College exhibition also included information about a family from the village of Blockley, Gloucestershire, England. Blockley was the home of small industries and craft workers long before the Industrial Revolution. Most of the town lies along the spring-fed, “never failing” Blockley Brook, “once a very vigorous stream, which, for a thousand years or more, drove many mills.”

 

This family showed remarkable continuity over many generations of involvement with occupations that require a high degree of visual and spatial talent—construction and operation of these small leased mills in the village, over hundreds of years—as well as barrel making and clock making. One clock made by a family member was in use in a church in a nearby village for over 260 years, from 1695 until 1962. 

 

In 1658, one of the family members (William Warner) immigrated to America, and settled in what was to be the western Philadelphia area. There, his descendants continued for generations in occupations and businesses that required talent in mechanics, invention, engineering, art, and craft. For example, Joseph Warner was a silversmith in the middle of the 1700s. 

 

It happens that this writer is a descendant of this family on his mother’s side. Although at the Oxford conference I spoke mainly of the visual-thinking scientists who preceded the Braggs and Thomsons, the Green College exhibition did include oil paintings by my artist parents (Anne Warner West and Charles Massey West Jr.), and sculptures by their grandson Jonathan West. It may be no surprise that within this visually oriented extended family, there are several likely or diagnosed dyslexics, including myself. 

 

SEEKING FAMILY PATTERNS 

 

I have to admit that when I was originally urged to submit samples of family art for the Green College exhibition, I was interested—but also reticent. However, in time I thought it might be interesting to look at our immediate family and then go back several generations to see what I could find. I think many families with high visual talents (with or without dyslexia) wonder about this sort of thing.

 

As I noted previously, the neurologist Dr. Norman Geschwind said that the dyslexia trait would not be so common and would not persist generation after generation (in its varied forms) if it were not good for something. So, I wondered, did it persist in our own family? If so, what was it good for? 

 

My parents met in art school. Some would expect (not entirely seriously) that this alone might be a strong predictor of some degree of dyslexia in their children and grandchildren (along with, perhaps, visual talents). I wondered what forms it might take in each generation. So, I thought I would provide a few examples in the exhibition to provoke discussion about the possibilities. Perhaps it will provoke discussion among other visual thinkers and their families as well. (In the process, I came to realize that my book, In the Mind’s Eye, is in some ways an attempt to answer the question, “what is it good for?”) 

 

ALWAYS SEEKING THE LEADING EDGE 

 

Viewing visual strengths and verbal difficulties over many generations (through many changes in technologies and economies) can be remark- ably instructive. We may be led to ask whether it is true, as some believe, that many of the early dyslexics and strong visual thinkers with reading, writing, and language problems quit their schools and small towns as quickly as they could—heading for the sailing ships and the railroads, the telegraph lines and early aircraft, the oil fields and gold mines. 

 

Did they mostly leave the small towns or the established cities like London, Boston, and Philadelphia—and seek their fortune (in disproportionate numbers) in places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Texas, Alaska, and California? Did all the Swedes who could not read (and so were not permitted to marry), really immigrate to America, as one Swedish researcher speculates? I have had long discussions about these possibilities with members of some of the old oil families in Houston, Texas. There seems to be a number of dyslexics in these families, generation after generation—and the pattern would seem to fit, one way or another. 

 

We may ask: how have varied strong visual traits contributed over time to both school difficulties and to remarkable innovations and inventions, within an ever-shifting technological context? Why do these individuals seem to be so often out in front of everyone else—especially when they seem to be able to move ahead rapidly with the minimum of book learning and paper credentials (while using their special visual-spatial abilities, creative imagination, and hands-on skills), often taking great risks? 

 

Why do so many of today’s entrepreneurs and technologists seem to fit this pattern? Why do there seem to be so many of these individuals in places like Silicon Valley? Whatever the time or place, some individuals seem to find ways to get away from the traditional books, the solid credentials, and the old ways of thinking, by creating things that are entirely new. (I have seen a lot of this among those in the leading edge of the computer graphics industry—where it is mainly an oral culture—since most are working way out ahead of courses, manuals, and lectures.) It seems to be a pattern that would be entirely familiar to individuals and families in which strong visual thinking is common. 

 

Perhaps it is worth looking at some of these families over time to see whether there is evidence of these enduring traits over many generations— visual thinkers doing the things they can do best in whatever technological context is made available to them by their time and place. Perhaps then we could begin to answer the question, “what is it good for?” 

 

“LEFT BEHIND AT THE BEGINNING OF THE RACE”— ONE LIFE STORY 

 

Seeking another answer to this question, in recent years I have been asked to write about the positive aspects of dyslexia and the way these positive traits have been reflected in my own life story. 

 

As with the Oxford University conference, it is sometimes useful to look at family patterns and the way mixed talents will become evident in different times and economic circumstances. I hope that some of these stories might indicate a way forward for some dyslexics and parents of dyslexics. In my simple-minded way, I often say that I think that in dyslexic families, “everyone gets a sprinkling.” As Norman Geschwind observed, the non-dyslexic brothers and sisters may often have dyslexic- related strengths as well. 

 

In my own life story, the beginning is quite familiar. The story of a little boy who could hardly read at all for the first three or four years of primary school—and struggled for many years to keep up. For a long time, his greatest ambition was to not be at the bottom of the class. 

 

Gradually, however, as the curriculum changed from rote memorization to larger concepts and logical thinking, the little boy began to see that he could do easily things that his classmates had trouble with—and that he could quickly see things that they did not easily see. 

 

Over time, this little boy became an author of books about dyslexia, visual talents, and emerging computer graphic technologies. His writing led to invitations to give many talks, including talks in nineteen foreign countries. His first book has been translated into three languages—Japanese, Chinese, and, most recently, Korean. To his surprise (and to the delight of his publisher), over time, his first book became a classic -- an “evergreen,” as they say in the trade -- a book that never stops selling. 

 

“I was happy as a child. . . . I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school [made] a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. . . . All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race.” 

 

These are not my words. However, these words perfectly reflect my own feelings through most of my own early education. They are the words of Winston Churchill, writing in 1930 of his own early life. At this point, Churchill was a well-known public figure—indeed, one who many thought was well past his prime—although his greatest test and his chief accomplishments were not to unfold until nine years later, with the beginning of World War II. 

 

PARADOXES OF DYSLEXIA 

 

The field of dyslexia is full of puzzles and paradoxes. One of the greatest of these is that sometimes—perhaps one can say many times—the student who appears most dumb in the early years of schooling can be among the most capable and successful later on in the world of work—especially when the work is creative and innovative—involving the ability to ponder, to think deeply, and to see patterns that others do not see. It seems that some high-level powers take time to develop—and are not yet apparent in youth. 

 

As one highly successful dyslexic scientist pointed out, it is not hard for a dyslexic to think “out of the box,” because, as he says, “they have never been in the box.”  In contrast, those who always could do quickly exactly what the teacher wanted (getting top grades and top test scores) can find it very hard—if not impossible—to have a really new thought or to deal successfully with a really new problem or novel situation. They find it easy to retain old knowledge, but they may find it nearly impossible to create new knowledge. 

 

THE DYSLEXIC ADVANTAGE 

 

Over the years, I have come to understand that one of the most important jobs for dyslexics is to see what others do not see or cannot see—as well as to introduce novel ideas that help to avoid the problems of “group think”—diverse brains generating knowledge and perceptions that ordi- nary brains would never produce. 

 

As we have said, in recent years, dyslexia is coming to be seen, remark- ably, as a significant advantage in an increasing number of fields—often linked to success in design innovation, entrepreneurial business, and scientific discovery. 

 

For example, as we have seen, one of the founders of the modern study of molecular biology was dyslexic and described how he used his powerful visual imagination to see new patterns and develop fundamental insights into the links between the genetic code and the immune system (twelve years ahead of all others in the field). Later, a different scientist proved experimentally that he was right and received a Nobel Prize for this work. 

 

A world-famous professor of paleontology tries to teach his graduate students how to think like a dyslexic so that they can see patterns invisible to others, patterns long thought impossible. The rest is “just memorization,” he says, without innovation or significant discovery.

 

In recent years, researchers have been discovering patterns in neurological structures that help to explain why many dyslexics are so good with high-level thinking, even though they have so much trouble with low-level thinking in their early schooling.  

For example, dyslexics are often highly proficient in big-picture and forward-looking thinking—seeing how complex things interact with each other, how a story line will develop, seeing the full potential in a new technology before others, seeing major business opportunities. When everyone else is terrified of the coming changes, often dyslexics and others with learning differences are the ones who see patterns and possibilities that others do not see—and welcome the changes and innovations. 

 

PERSONAL DISCOVERIES 

 

In my own early schooling, mostly in a rural public school system, I had learned to read very poorly and very late and had great difficulties with most primary school subjects. This was a puzzle to my teachers and a worry to my otherwise supportive parents. 

 

Even in the comparatively undemanding rural school system, I could barely keep up. I could learn almost nothing by rote. I could not memorize. I could not retain exact texts or numbers. I had to have time to ponder and think. I had to understand. I needed to know the story. I had to find a way to visualize the information. Then, I would never forget. 

 

I knew nothing of my own dyslexia at the time. I was not diagnosed until decades later—at the age of forty-one. But I did know that there were many things that I could not do but that were quite easy for my class- mates. However, gradually, in the last years before college, the increasingly high-level content began to change what was wanted and what I could produce. Gradually, everything was transformed. The higher-level curriculum began to play to my strengths rather than to my weaknesses. 

 

It is interesting to see how shifting to higher levels can be a great help to certain individuals—even in areas of relative weakness—as mathematics had often been for me. It is worth giving a few details. Before, I had trouble with arithmetic and “math facts,” but in time I came to love geometry, log tables, and the slide rule (obviously, long before laptops and smartphones). Eventually—to my great surprise—I got good grades in a two-semester course on the core concepts, philosophy, and history of higher mathematics that I was required to take in college. 

 

The math course required us to make up our own “cheat sheets” with formulas and equations. The professor said he was not interested in whether we could memorize the formulas. He wanted to see evidence that we understood the basic ideas and what you can do with the various forms of higher mathematics. We learned about Boolean algebra, truth tables, deductive logic, various forms of geometry and graphing, and the fundamentals of calculus, trigonometry, probability, and statistics— along with information about the lives of the major mathematicians and their historical context. 

 

I was amazed and delighted to learn certain fundamental concepts— such as “conic sections,” the way circles, hyperbolas, and parabolas can be seen as just different cuts through the double cone shape. I was fascinated by the ubiquity of the “curve of error,” the normal distribution of frequency found in all of nature. On one level, mathematics was an impossible chore in working memory. On another level, mathematics was a set of powerful concepts that were not only intellectually satisfying but also could be applied in many areas of work, such as the emerging computer technologies that have so dominated recent decades. 

 

I have always kept the math textbook we used, and I never would have written the math chapter of my first book if it were not for this two- semester course. I noted, for example, the actions of my literary friends when reading the early drafts of my first book. They just skipped over my math chapter since they could not imagine understanding or being interested in such a topic. As intended, this math survey course proved to be of great value in my much-later work in several fields—especially early on, in those involving quality control and redesign specifications for early computer management information systems. (My own first regular job involved working with mainframes and punch cards. Others did the programming, but I understood the basics of what was going on and specified what the programmers needed to do.) 

 

The course also permitted me to appreciate the significance of radical new mathematical developments such as the fractals and chaos theory of Benoit Mandelbrot (which subsequently proved valuable in my observations and writings about the early development of computer graphics and other areas—including, amazingly, the stock market crash of 2007–2008). 

 

In both high school and college, I had a lot of trouble with foreign languages. But I loved linguistics and the history of language. I still had trouble with spelling and my slow, faltering reading—but I began to see that I seemed to have a special knack for following logical arguments in philosophy, complex story lines in literature, and higher-level conceptual thinking in science and technology. 

 

Strangely, it was by my final year of high school, before college, when I felt that I was getting more out of the readings than many of my classmates. I can still recall, in some detail, almost all of the readings we did during that year. 

 

I then went on to a small liberal arts college that proved to be the right place, on the whole, for the further growth of these newfound capabilities. Remarkably, my major studies were English literature and philosophy (so many books to be read and understood). Later, I did graduate work in international relations. I found that I could do high-level work, but I had to be careful because I could easily be overwhelmed by large volumes of reading and by large volumes of data and details to be recalled and named on demand. I had no trouble understanding the fundamentals in many different fields—or, indeed, the not-so-obvious linkages between different fields. 

 

SCHOOL WEAKNESSES, WORK STRENGTHS

 

After graduate school and military service, I was employed by several consulting and engineering companies. First I was hired as a trainer, but I soon moved on to a range of projects—in a can-do, product-oriented atmosphere that I loved. I was involved with projects on early computer information systems, studies of the effectiveness of certain medical services, developing national energy plans and international trade (participating in one trade mission to four Asian countries and then leading another mission to three countries—to Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia; and then to Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia). Eventually, I was the number two manager for a large five-year renewable energy development and training program for engineers in Egypt, funded by the US Agency for International Development. 

 

Throughout these work experiences, I found ways to work around my weaknesses and ways to exploit my talents and strengths. (For example, I learned to never mention a number unless I had it printed, and rechecked, in front of me.) Usually working with engineers, economists, or computer programmers, I had little formal technical training in each area, but I found that I could easily understand the fundamental concepts and technical projects at an appropriate level, sometimes better than the specialists. Others could be relied on for the data and the details. I could write about the projects, integrate the various parts, explain them to clients, organize the presentations, write the proposals, plan the projects, and, eventually, manage them. 

SEEKING FAMILY PATTERNS 

 

I didn’t really begin to understand the common difficulties and the common patterns of talent among dyslexics until my own two sons started having problems in their early years of primary school. The idea that they were going to go through what I had gone through was a great emotional shock for me. Suddenly, I realized that I had to understand this thing that had been running my life—and, in part, the life of my dyslexic artist father, as well as other family members. 

 

So I had myself tested for dyslexia. I attended dyslexia conferences and started the research that eventually became the book In The Mind’s Eye. I soon learned that almost all of the professionals in the field wanted mainly to fix reading problems. But they mostly ignored the special talents that many dyslexics have. Coming from a family of visual-thinking artists and engineers—many with dyslexia or related problems and talents—I realized that there was more to the story than just reading problems. 

 

My research and first book focused on these talents as no other book had done before—the neurological foundations, the case studies and pro- files of famous people, and the growing role of new computer graphic information visualization technologies. As I did my research in the late 1980s, I could see that the world of technology was changing in funda- mental ways—almost all in favor of the dyslexics and their distinctive mix of talents—while, of course, most conventional educators and institutions were then—and still are—blind to these changes. 

 

I was amazed to suddenly realize that, in most cases, the major technological changes unfolding in recent periods required skills and talents that seem to come easily to many dyslexics (information visualization, big-picture thinking, seeing what is coming over the horizon, seeing pat- terns that others do not see, etc.)—while the things dyslexics have had the most difficulty with (e.g., rote memorization, spelling, rapid reading, and mental calculation) were becoming less and less important in the work- place. Few education experts, even now, seem to comprehend the inevitable consequences of these major and unstoppable trends. 

 

I suspect that my strong focus on the talents of dyslexics is the reason that my first book is still very much alive today—and still regarded as radical new thinking—more than twenty-five years since the first edition was published in 1991. Even the university research librarians liked it. It was selected out of some 6,500 books as one of the “best of the best” for the year by the Research Librarians of the American Library Association (one of only thirteen books in their broad psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience category). 

 

Over time, the book has come to be highly regarded in many quarters. To my great delight, the late Dr. Oliver Sacks (the famous author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) came to write in the foreword to the second edition: “In the Mind’s Eye brings out the special problems of people with dyslexia, but also their strengths, which are so often overlooked. . . . It stands alongside Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind as a testament to the range of human talent and possibility.” 

 

VISUAL THINKERS, VISUAL TECHNOLOGIES 

 

Over the years, as noted before, I have been invited to give talks and workshops for scientific, medical, art, design, computer, and business groups in the United States and overseas, including for groups in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Dubai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and twelve European countries. 

 

In addition, I was recruited to write a regular series of articles and columns on the broad effects of visualization technologies for an in-house quarterly publication of the international professional association for computer graphic artists and technologists (ACM-SIGGRAPH)—a truly international organization with many creative dyslexics (and conferences as large as sixty thousand attendees, often in Los Angeles). Many of these columns have been collected into a book with the title, Thinking Like Einstein: Returning to Our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolu tion in Computer Information Visualization. 

 

Attitudes toward the special talents of dyslexics have been changing, but very, very slowly. Gradually, non-dyslexics are beginning to see why it is important to have dyslexics involved in their innovative start-up businesses or their advanced scientific research projects. They realize that dyslexics and different thinkers can often provide fresh and unexpected insights that cannot be provided by even the smartest non-dyslexics. 

 

However, no one could be more surprised that I am with the wide and continuing interest in my books and articles and the ideas they contain. As I started my book research long ago, it was more than a small comfort to me to know that Winston Churchill, for all his major achievements as a leader in time of crisis, had also—once—been at the bottom of the class, feeling “completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race.” 

 

VISUAL TALENTS AND DYSLEXIA IN A WORLD OF ART— THE WEST FAMILY 

 

In the foreword to the second edition of In the Mind’s Eye, Dr. Oliver Sacks notes: “West himself is dyslexic—this, no doubt, has strongly influenced his life and research interests, but also gives him a uniquely sympathetic understanding from the inside as well as the outside.” Of course, Sacks is correct—my dyslexia has influenced a great deal. But there is more. My own special interest in visual thinking and visual technologies is doubtless also heavily influenced by the fact that my parents were professionally trained artists who met in art school. 

 

It is noteworthy that both of my parents attained top student prizes at a time when classical representational art training was still important. Indeed, I now refer to my parents as among “the last of the American Impressionists.” It was doubtless also important that my mother’s side of the family included a long line of engineers, millwrights, artists, craftsmen, silversmiths, and the like—very visual, very hands-on. 

 

It also might be significant that my mother, Anne Dickie Warner West, was mostly deaf from an early age—because she had had scarlet fever twice when very young (she was born in 1908, before antibiotics were available to treat such illnesses). She was taught to read lips. This fact probably encouraged her to use her high visual talents much more than might have been the case otherwise. It also taught my brother Charles, “Chip,” and me, from our earliest days, to speak clearly and distinctly—and to make sure that we were understood, repeating back every message when necessary. It also taught us how much guesswork she had to do—which she did very, very well. I came to believe that lipreading gave her only half the message, or less. The rest had to be supplied by context and by high intelligence. 

 

It is also relevant that my mother grew up in the small, slowly industrializing city of Wilmington, Delaware, a world that had then become a center for art and magazine illustration. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, magazine illustration was a highly profitable business. The successful magazine illustrator Howard Pyle started a school in Wilmington that trained famous representational artists like Violet Oakley and N. C. Wyeth (the father and grandfather of the even more famous Andrew Wyeth and James Wyeth). Since it was a small city, the families knew each other well. The Warner and Wyeth families even had the same pediatrician, Dr. Margaret Handy—whose portrait was painted several times by Andrew Wyeth. 

 

(End of excerpt.)