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Mathematicians with Asperger's
Over the course of the weekend, I found myself reading an interesting interview with Mark Haddon, writer of multi-award winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. A book that I read during my summer holiday last year (I'm so ahead of the fashion, me), it was enjoyable and told the story of a young boy suffering from Asperger's disease (the details of which can be found at aspergers.com). Despite the obvious mathematical thread within the book, I didn't consider the correlation between it and the condition of the narrator much more until I came to this bit of the interview:
"The ratio of men-to-women Asperger's sufferers is nine to one. And we all know some middle-aged men with undiagnosed Asperger's. Go to a maths department in a university town and the ratio goes up sharply. A friend said: 'This not a book about Asperger's; it's about a young mathematician with behavioural issues. If Christopher was real, he'd go on to have a perfectly adequate place in any maths department, and be surrounded by people not very different from himself."
I was slightly taken aback by this, my instinct being one of wanting to defend those within the maths department in which I reside. However, having read a little more about the condition of Asperger's, and having considered that with respect to the stereotypical image associated with a (male) mathematician, I can see why people draw the parallels between the two states.
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Should I be proud? Or should I be scared?
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