Temple Grandin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Temple Grandin
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Grandin in 2011
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Mary Temple Grandin
August 29, 1947 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Institutions | Colorado State University |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | Grandin |
Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American scientist, inventor, and animal expert. She is famous for her work on how to treat farm animals kindly. She has written over 60 scientific papers about animal behavior.
Grandin also works as a helper for the livestock industry, giving advice on how animals act. She is a well-known speaker for people with autism. Temple Grandin was one of the first autistic people to share her personal experiences. She teaches Animal Sciences at Colorado State University.
In 2010, Time 100 magazine named her one of the 100 most important people in the world. A movie about her life, called Temple Grandin, won many awards. Grandin strongly supports autism rights and the idea of neurodiversity. This means celebrating different ways brains work.
Contents
Temple Grandin: Early Life and Discoveries
Family and Childhood
Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a wealthy family. She was called Temple to avoid confusion with another family employee named Mary. Her mother, Anna Eustacia Purves, was an actress and singer. Her father, Richard McCurdy Grandin, was a real estate agent. He came from a family that owned a very large wheat farm.
Temple's parents divorced when she was 15. Her mother later married Ben Cutler, a famous saxophonist. Temple has three younger siblings: two sisters and a brother.
Understanding Autism
Temple Grandin was not officially diagnosed with autism until she was an adult. When she was two, doctors thought she had "brain damage." This idea was later proven wrong by brain scans when she was 63.
In her mid-teens, Temple's mother found a checklist for autism. She realized that Temple's actions matched the description. Temple was later found to be an autistic savant. This means she has amazing skills in certain areas.
Early Education and Support
Temple's mother took her to top experts at Boston Children's Hospital. They wanted to find ways to help Temple instead of sending her to a special institution. Her mother found a neurologist who suggested speech therapy.
Temple started speech therapy at two and a half years old. A nanny also played educational games with her for hours. Temple began kindergarten at Dedham Country Day School. Her teachers worked hard to make the school a good place for her.
Temple feels lucky that she had supportive teachers from elementary school onwards. However, she has said that junior high and high school were very hard for her. At that time, doctors often suggested sending autistic children to institutions. Temple's father wanted to follow this advice, but her mother strongly disagreed.
School Challenges and Mentors
Temple went to Beaver Country Day School for grades seven to nine. She was expelled at age 14 for throwing a book at a classmate who teased her. Temple remembers being called the "nerdy kid" and being made fun of. Students would call her "tape recorder" because she repeated words. She said, "I could laugh about it now, but back then it really hurt."
After her expulsion, Temple's parents divorced. When she was 15, Temple spent a summer on her aunt Ann's Arizona ranch. This trip was very important for her future career.
After Beaver Country Day School, Temple's mother enrolled her at Hampshire Country School in New Hampshire. This school was for gifted students who struggled in regular settings. Temple did well there, becoming Winter Carnival Queen and hockey team captain.
At Hampshire Country School, Temple met William Carlock, a science teacher. He became her mentor and helped her gain confidence. Carlock encouraged Temple to build her squeeze machine. She got the idea from feeling calm when cattle were held in a squeeze chute. With Carlock's help, she built her "hug box" at age 18.
Carlock continued to support Temple in college. When others criticized her hug box, he suggested she study its effects scientifically. This helped Temple turn her strong interest in the hug box into a useful project.
College and Advanced Degrees
After finishing Hampshire Country School in 1966, Temple went to college. She earned her bachelor's degree in human psychology from Franklin Pierce University in 1970. She then got a master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975. Finally, she earned her doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1989.
Temple Grandin: Career and Contributions
Understanding Autism Spectrum
Steve Silberman, in his book NeuroTribes, wrote that Temple Grandin helped many people. She was one of the first adults to openly share that she was autistic. Her first book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, was published in 1986. In it, she shared her inner feelings and thoughts.
In her book Thinking in Pictures (1995), neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote that it helped bridge the gap between her world and ours. He said it allowed a glimpse into a very different kind of mind.
At first, Temple described herself as "recovered" from autism. But later, she realized she hadn't recovered. Instead, she had learned to adapt to the social world around her.
Temple once thought all autistic people thought in pictures, like she does. But by 2006, she realized this was wrong. She then described three types of thinking:
- Visual Thinkers: Like her, they think in specific pictures.
- Music and Math Thinkers: They think in patterns and are good at math, chess, or computers.
- Verbal Logic Thinkers: They think in word details and might love history.
Her later book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum (2013), further explained these different ways of thinking.
Temple Grandin became widely known after Oliver Sacks wrote about her in his book An Anthropologist on Mars (1995). The title comes from how Temple feels around people who are not autistic. She said it's like being an anthropologist studying another planet.
In the mid-1980s, Temple first spoke publicly about autism. She was asked by Ruth C. Sullivan, a founder of the Autism Society of America. Sullivan said that Temple's talks were very popular. People wanted to hear from someone who could explain what it felt like to be autistic. Temple could describe being very sensitive to sounds, like being tied to a train track with a train coming.
Based on her own experiences, Temple Grandin believes in early help for autistic children. She also stresses the importance of supportive teachers. These teachers can guide a child's strong interests in helpful ways.
Temple has talked about her extreme sensitivity to noise and other feelings. She says words are her second language. She thinks "totally in pictures," using her amazing visual memory. This helps her turn information into a mental slideshow. She believes her success in designing animal facilities comes from her ability to remember small details. She compares her memory to full-length movies she can replay in her head.
Temple Grandin supports neurodiversity. This means she doesn't want to get rid of autism genes completely. She believes that people with mild autism should be accepted. However, she thinks severely autistic children who cannot speak need therapies to help them function.
Working with Livestock
In 1980, Temple Grandin published her first scientific papers on how beef cattle behave during handling. She was one of the first scientists to point out that animals are sensitive to small things in their environment. These include shadows, dangling chains, and other details most people don't notice.
For her Ph.D., she studied how different environments affected pigs. She looked at how their surroundings changed their behavior and brain development. Temple expanded her ideas in her book, Animals Make Us Human.
In 1993, she edited the first edition of Livestock Handling and Transport. This book included chapters from experts worldwide. Later editions were published in 2000, 2007, and 2014.
As a professor at Colorado State University, Temple and her student Bridgett Voisinet found something important. They showed that cattle who stayed calm during handling gained more weight. This was a new idea when their paper was published in 1997.
Another key paper by Grandin in 1997 showed that an animal's past experiences affect how it reacts to being handled later. This was also a new concept in the animal-handling world.
Temple Grandin designed a special system for holding cattle during stunning at large meat plants. This system uses a center track conveyor. The first one was installed in the mid-1980s. Many large meat companies now use this system.
She also created a way to score animal welfare at slaughtering plants. Using this scoring system greatly improved how animals were handled and stunned.
In 2008, Grandin published Humane Livestock Handling. This book reviews cattle behavior and provides diagrams for building humane handling systems. Many of her ideas are also available on her website. Temple helped design animal processing plants at the White Oak Pastures organic farm.
Animal Welfare Advocacy
Temple Grandin has given many talks about her experiences. She describes feeling threatened by everything around her and being misunderstood. This feeling drives her work to make livestock handling more humane. She studied how cattle react to people, movements, objects, and light.
Grandin designed curved corrals to reduce stress, panic, and injury in animals going to slaughter. Some animal activists question how she can work in the slaughterhouse industry and still claim to care for animals. Temple explains that her autism helps her see the world from the animals' point of view. She feels a deep connection to them, especially when she holds an animal's head as it is being slaughtered.
Her website promotes better standards for slaughterhouses and livestock farms. In 2004, she won an award from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
One of her famous essays is "Animals Are Not Things." In it, she argues that while animals are legally property, they still have ethical protections. She compares owning cattle to owning screwdrivers. You can smash a screwdriver, but you cannot torture an animal. This shows a big difference in how the law treats them.
Her understanding of animals has helped her design kind and thoughtful animal-handling equipment. She was recognized by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in 2009.
In 2012, when the beef industry faced concerns about "pink slime," Temple Grandin supported its use. She said it should be sold and labeled, because we shouldn't waste so much beef.
Temple Grandin believes using animals for food is ethical if done correctly. She says, "We've got to give those animals a decent life, and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animals respect."
Temple Grandin: Personal Life and Recognition
Personal Details
Temple Grandin says that the part of other people that has emotional relationships is not part of her. She has never married or had children. She prefers science fiction, documentaries, and thrillers over romantic films. Besides her work, she enjoys horseback riding and biochemistry.
She has written that autism affects every part of her life. Temple wears comfortable clothes to help with her sensory processing disorder. She organizes her life to avoid being overwhelmed by too many sensations. She takes antidepressants regularly. She no longer uses her squeeze machine, saying in 2010 that it broke and she now prefers hugging people.
Awards and Honors
In 2010, Temple Grandin was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time 100 magazine. She received a Double Helix Medal in 2011. Many universities have given her honorary degrees, including McGill University (1999) and Carnegie Mellon University (2012).
In 2011, Grandin became an Ashoka Fellow. In 2012, she was added to the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. She also received a Meritorious Achievement Award from the World Organisation for Animal Health in 2015.
In 2016, Grandin was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, she joined the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2023, she received honorary Doctor of Science and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degrees.
Temple Grandin: Media and Legacy
Featured in Media
Temple Grandin has appeared on many major TV shows. These include Primetime Live, the Today Show, and Larry King Live. She has also been featured in magazines like Time, People, and Forbes, and in The New York Times.
She was the subject of the BBC documentary "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow" (2006). She also appeared in the first episode of the series First Person by Errol Morris.
A semi-biographical HBO film, Temple Grandin, was released in 2010. Claire Danes played Temple Grandin in the movie. The film won seven Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie. Claire Danes also won a Golden Globe Award for her role.
Grandin was featured in the 2006 documentary Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the Brain. In 2011, she appeared in the Science documentary series Ingenious Minds. In 2018, she was in This Business of Autism, a documentary about autism employment.
She was also mentioned in Michael Pollan's 2006 book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, where she discussed the livestock industry.
The folk-punk band AJJ included two songs about her on their album Christmas Island. In 2017, a children's book called The Girl Who Thought In Pictures, A Story of Temple Grandin was published.
In 2018, she was profiled in the book Rescuing Ladybugs as a "global hero." In 2023, I am Temple Grandin was added to the "Ordinary People Change the World" children's book series. The PBS show Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum also featured her. In 2024, she was described as "the superstar of the autism community" in the book Don't Mourn for Us.
Images for kids
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Temple Grandin giving a speech on "pink slime" for the National Association of College and University Food Services 2013 National Conference in Minneapolis
See also
