Mozart. Dude heard an exclusive Catholic track and copied it at 14.
So I am sure he had a touch of the 'tism.
OG pirate
There is a legit theory in historical circles that Galileo Galilei was brcause he clearly didn’t understand some social conventions. Additionally, he was really ok with home arrest.
Oh no, sentenced to stay at my house where all my favorite stuff is, and a legally binding excuse to not have to go to that thing someone invited me to. You sure showed me, whatever shall I do?
Henry Cavendish
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cavendish
Scientific genius, asocial and probably asexual, extremely shy, especially so around women, could only talk to one person at a time, and then only if he knew them, and they were male. Also the largest depositor at the Bank of England in his day.
Alfred Krupp, German steel manufacturer, inventor, and the largest arms dealer of his age.
He was obsessed with building cannons and built the first successful breech loading cannon of cast steel. Common wisdom was that such cannons would explode and kill their operators. He kept building cannons even though nobody would buy them.
He was an extreme hypocondriac who also suffered from depression. He would not leave his bed for weeks or months at a time. He would weigh anyone who visited his house and kept over thirty years of records before he died. He loved the smell of horse dung and had his office built over the stables so he could always smell it.
jesus christ bro was cooked
I think very few of them would have been famous, even posthumously, if they had lived today.
In what sense? That their work wouldn’t be appreciated or they wouldn’t have reached that point of success due to society?
There are way more people today and we compete with the entire world so it’s harder to stand out.
And progress is a lot more complicated today. It requires bigger teams working with more complicated equipment and more data than ever before. That means more people involved and, again, less opportunity for any one person to stand out.
This is all exacerbated by scientific journals and media companies that are more interested in making money than in making sure the best stuff rises to the top.
And people aren’t on the same page like they used to be. When there are a billion books, movies, songs, etc. to choose from, pop culture becomes less and less of a thing. People end up in their own increasingly atomized camps and can spend whole lifetimes there, not really caring about stars from the other camps.
Euler, most probably.
Nikola Tesla
Thomas Jefferson. Good at writing, shit at social conventions. Developed a whole mechanised house via slaves. Slavery might not be an autistic trait, but mechanizing your house is.
I wouldn’t consider him a positive example, but he almost certainly was autistic.
Alan Turing, I bet
Bet.
Diogenes
I feel like a lot of philosophers were on the spectrum. Socrates is a definite contender.
Kant
they say you could set your watch by when his Dino nuggets timer dings
David Lynch.
Buddha
Isaac Newton.
Nietzsche
