Rough basic bio material for TGW obit based on notes below -- includes AI speculation
News for Gettysburg College Class Notes -- March 22, 2023, Revised Feb. 22, 2025
Rev. Dr. John R. Nagle
2115-102 Lossen Loop
Wilmington, N.C. 2849
919-602-1623
In my last column, I asked for stories of books and travel for the class of ’65 news. I received a long reply from Thomas G. West – and Tom asked me to use or cut parts, as I liked.
Any books or publications? Well, in fact, yes, Tom says – with three books still in circulation, sometimes with new editions and new additional material. The first book, In the Mind’s Eye, published in 1991 was recently released in a Third Edition, by a new publisher (which had bought the old publisher with its many titles). It has been in print continuously now going on 32 years -- what they call in the trade an “evergreen” – a title that never ages and never stops selling. This new edition includes supportive introductory material from Dr. Oliver Sacks and Dr. Temple Grandin.
Earlier in the year, Tom reports that an article was published in a Singapore journal, “Dyslexic Strengths in Times of Adversity” (Asia Pacific Journal of Developmental Differences). In addition, he was asked to prepare a short chapter “Visual Thinker and Medical Visionary” for a comprehensive book (IOS Press, Amsterdam) about the career of the late Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, former director of the US National Library of Medicine. Among many innovations, Dr. Lindberg was a major force in helping to make medical information available within the US and eventually to the world via the then new Internet. (See blog link below for document copies and related material.)
Any travels? Well, quite a lot, but in the past. Tom reports that he has given hundreds of invited talks in many parts of the US and 19 foreign countries, all before the pandemic. After some 30 years of travel and talks in these countries, Tom says he has been happy to be active lately mainly via the Internet -- with groups interested in the talents of dyslexics and other different thinkers. During and soon after the pandemic, talks have been given via zoom to audiences in Egypt, The Netherlands, Singapore and most recently, Zimbabwe.
Tom reports that now more than ever dyslexia is increasingly seen as an advantage in many technical, entrepreneurial business and scientific fields. Business consulting firms like EY have generated reports documenting that many employers are now looking to hire creative and innovative dyslexics. LinkedIn has instituted a check box for “dyslexic thinking” as a positive trait for job hunting and it is said that more than 10,000 checked the box in early years.
Indeed, some observers are now beginning to think that the memorization and rapid test taking capabilities most valued in conventional “A” students are now being taken over by AI bots that get top scores on professional exams -- at low cost, with great speed. Accordingly, some observers are beginning to wonder whether some dyslexic visual thinkers might be able to see patterns and solve problems in ways not available to the bots or conventional “A” students.
In recent years, Tom has been meeting each four to six weeks via zoom with an international group named “Whole” that is interested in the talents of dyslexics. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, the group includes researchers from Oxford, Cambridge and Sheffield universities in the UK as well as researchers and advocates from the Netherlands, China/Canada, Iran, France and Singapore. Tom reports that he is also an active board member for two dyslexia related organizations, Siena School, a high school near Washington, DC, and a consultancy, Dyslexic Advantage, in the Seattle, Washington, area.
All this may seem quite improbable considering Tom’s own early history: A student who could hardly read at all until he was about 9 or 10 years old. A late bloomer who continued to struggle with memorization and other academic work. But slowly he began to see strengths in other areas -- like visual thinking, pattern recognition, big picture thinking, careful research and eventually story telling in his books and articles. It seems an improbable story, but actually, in many ways his story is a typical of many dyslexics. His dyslexia was not recognized until he was tested at age 41 years, after his two dyslexic sons – a common pattern.
Now, as he approaches 82 years of age, like so many in our ’65 class, all of this might seem difficult to understand. But those with dyslexia (and other different thinkers) we now know can be full of paradoxes and surprises – successful authors who cannot spell; high level mathematicians who do not know their math facts; architects who cannot draw.
Tom’s invited talks have varied, depending on the main interests of the audience, but have usually been either about dyslexic talents or about visual thinking in 3D space and the rapidly emerging powerful visual and computer graphic technologies (more recently often providing the technical basis for today’s quickly advancing AI systems).
While giving talks in many different countries, varied levels of interest have been observed in these ideas and concepts. Remarkably, he found that high-level, creative scientists are often the most interested in these observations, while many conventionally trained educators and school psychologists are usually not interested (mostly because they have never been trained to see these unexpected patterns of high ability or very high ability among these students).
Some of the groups that have shown the highest interest in West’s talks have been: scientists in the 50 Max Planck Institutes in Germany, the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley California, Harvard and MIT education groups, Oxford and Cambridge University research centers in England, the U.S. National Library of Medicine-National Institutes of Health, the Dyslexia Association of Singapore, Hong Kong pediatricians and the master spies (and former breakers of the Nazi codes) at GCHQ in the UK. These are practitioners, innovators, discoverers, practical users who see evidence of these special capabilities every day.
Accordingly, based on his invited talks to many different groups, Tom has observed that the higher up he would go -- among Nobel Prize winning scientists and award-winning physicians and surgeons, for example -- the more likely he would find those who readily understood these patterns in unexpected weaknesses along with very high-level strengths. Gradually he realized that a lot of low-level scientists (and other professionals) mainly know what they have been taught; while for very high-level scientists, it is a great advantage to think differently and to see patterns that others do not see. Of course, this is also true for many entrepreneurs, artists, designers and inventors.
After reading Tom’s first book, a highly respected molecular biologist at Caltech and a top prize-winning pediatric surgeon, contacted him, separately, with the same general message: “I have read your book. It explains how I think; no one else understands. Please visit, I want to tell you my story.” [Total words: 1122]
Blog: inthemindseyedyslexicrenaissance.blogspot.com. Email: thomasgwest@gmail.com.
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