This is a podcast extra from nature, hosted by me, Jeff Marsh.

Towards the end of the 18th century, in a district of South London called Clapham,

a curious man takes a solitary walk. He begins late at night and sticks to the middle of the road

in a careful bid to avoid interaction with anyone else. He takes the same route every night for

25 years. During the day, he makes some of

the greatest scientific breakthroughs of his time. He was the first to accurately measure the density

of the earth and the first to decipher the composition of water, but he's uncredited for most of it

because he always shunned the spotlight. This man is Henry Cavendish, and he's been retrospectively

diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a type of autism. It was unheard of in the 18th century, but

diagnosed at higher rates than ever today. There are many on the autism spectrum, who, like Henry

Cavendish, shape the world around us, and we as a society should appreciate their value and help them flourish.

That's according to Steve Silberman in his recently published book, NeuroTribes.

I was actually on a boat in Alaska with more than 100 computer programmers,

and there was a guy on the boat who had invented Pearl, which was one of the first open-source

programming languages. And right before we got back into port, I asked him if I could interview

him at home, and he said, oh, sure, I should tell you, we have an autistic daughter. And then a

couple of months later, I was writing about another technologically adept family in Silicon Valley.

And I asked the sister-in-law of the woman I was profiling if I could come interview her at home.

And she said, yes, I should tell you, we have an autistic daughter.

And that struck me as an odd coincidence because at that point, like most people, I believe that

autism was a very, very rare condition. I didn't know much about autism beyond Rain Man.

And I ended up writing an article in 2001 called The Geek Syndrome about people with autistic

...