This week, a new book encourages us to think differently about people with autism spectrum disorder.

It could be that having a diversity of human cognitive styles will prove to be humanity's saving grace.

Plus, plankton's surprising role in our clouds. This is the Nature Podcast for September 10th,

2015. I'm Adam Levy. And I'm Jeff Marsh.

Towards the end of the 18th century, in a South London district 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 decide for 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 rate than ever

today. There are many on the autism spectrum

who, like Henry Cavendish, shaped 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 started off by asking Steve, when autism became known to psychiatry?

In the 1930s, in the late 1930s, Hans Asperger in Vienna, discovered what we now call the

autism spectrum. He saw autism as a very broad and inclusive condition with diverse

and colorful manifestations that ranged from children who

couldn't speak to chabby professors of astronomy. Unfortunately, his work was buried after World War

2 by the man who would go on to become the world's leading authority on autism, Leo Connor, an American

child psychiatrist.

Conner's view was that autism was a very, very rare form of what he called infantile

psychosis.

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