A medical doctor diagnoses Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as having classic symptoms of nerdiness (although he calls it "Asperger's Syndrome").
Einstein started to speak only after his third birthday. He was a slow, thoughtful talker who would also softly repeat sentences to himself until he was seven. Although outstanding at maths, his teachers found him disruptive in the classroom.As do half the software engineers in Silicon Valley...Later in life he was a notoriously confusing lecturer. While he had healthy friendships, he is said to have found small talk difficult.
"What most people with Asperger syndrome find difficult is casual chatting," Prof Cohen-Baron told New Scientist magazine.
Newton cut an even more eccentric figure than Einstein. According to contemporary accounts, he barely spoke, became so engrossed in his work that he often forgot to eat, and was said to be grumpy with his friends. He had a nervous breakdown at 50, triggered by paranoia and depression.If there's a difference between Asperger's Syndrome and garden variety nerdiness, the article doesn't explain what it is. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 01, 2003 01:02 PMAsperger syndrome was first identified as a separate condition from other autism-like disorders in 1944. It is still poorly understood by doctors and often goes undiagnosed.
People with Asperger syndrome are often of average or above average intelligence and lead highly productive lives. However, many sufferers find social situations confusing.
They can be good at picking up details and facts, and may be obsessive about deeply-held interests, but find it hard to work out what others are thinking and feeling. Often they do things in inflexible and repetitive ways and have problems making friends.
I think you're right that it sounds less like a syndrome than just a certain type of (nerdish) person. Can it really be a personality disorder to have no interest in idle gossip and sports talk? I'd say it's closer to an accolade.
Posted by: Peter Cuthbertson on May 3, 2003 08:44 AMI'm sorry, but muttering to one's self over is, being so rigid and repetative that it borders on manic are not behaviors I'd classify under general nerdiess. Speaking with my girlfriend, who's a Speech Language Pathologist who works with learning disabled kids, Asberger's kids have other problems that generally separate them from being just weird. For example, many of them have a difficult time understanding figurative language, even as they get older.
That being said, making a post-mortem diagnosis like this, especially a few centuries after the fact, is a bit ridiculous.
Posted by: Geoff on May 4, 2003 03:59 PMThis sounds like a crock. If figurative language is a stumper for Asperger's sufferers, then explain Einstein's 'God does not play dice', or Newton's 'standing on the shoulders of giants'.
I hate these retrospective analyses. They don't sound like scholarship to me, except in the most detailed cases (did Edgar Allen Poe die of rabies; did Lincoln have Marfan's Syndrome?).
I took one of those silly 'systematisation' quizzes which I found from Tim Blair's site. It pretty much said I had Asperger's, which runs up against the inconvenient reality that I'm an unregenerate party animal out gabbing away with my buddies five nights a week.
Posted by: David Gillies on May 5, 2003 10:26 AMLike autism, Aspergers has many different levels and manifestations. The symptoms go beyond "nerdism" - they extend to an inability to function correctly in social environments and often an obssessive need for "order" (as in autism).
Posted by: Ribbity Frog on May 6, 2003 05:07 AMIf for no other reason than that Mac Diva goes off on it, you should be better informed than that.
Posted by: Plane Jane on May 6, 2003 02:14 PMI totally agree that this kind of retrospective analyses are kind of silly. As the mother of two boys who very slightly would be labeled as Asperger's candidates, sometimes the restrospectives serve the purpose of helping us parents feel like Asperger's tends to produce some pretty spectacular people. But I've read biographies of Einstein, and he sounded too social to truly have an Asperger's condition.
As far as nerdiness vs. Asperger's, the latter is really debilitating for some people. They have no way of understanding another person's true intentions, and therefore are easily taken advantage of. One might attribute that characteristic to those with a more simple mind, but people with Asperger's tend to be very bright. It's a very complex syndrome, with many variations of disability, from hardly at all to severe.
Posted by: Kris Munson on March 12, 2005 12:21 PM