Mary Temple Grandin was born on August 29, 1947. She is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, designer, inventor, activist, and activism spokesperson. She is autistic and is one of the first to document the insights on the autism spectrum from personal experience. She has authored over 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Grandin invented the Hug Box device to calm those on the autism spectrum. Mary Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a very wealthy family. She did not talk until she was three and a half years old. She was fortunate to have teachers who pushed her by teaching her how to wait and take turns when playing board games. For this reason, at the age of 5, she was able to go into a normal kindergarten. Her mother never gave up on her education and sent her to great schools that paved her way through to the sciences. Her parents arranged for speech therapy at an early age. Her mother is Anna Eustacia Purves, an actress, singer and granddaughter of the co-inventor for the autopilot aviation system. Her father was a real estate agent and heir to the largest corporate wheat farm business in America. She is the oldest of four children. Grandin explained that her life changed when she met her science teacher William Carlock, who worked for NASA. He understood her mind and provided support for her throughout the rest of her life. He aided her in the development of the Squeeze Machine. She received her bachelors in human psychology in 1970 and earned her master’s degree in animal sciences from Arizona State University. She continued on to earn her doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. She focused on the design of human animal handling equipment. She was a visual thinker which enabled her to pay special attention to detail. She described her mind as working like Google for images. She thought of things in pictures which aided in the creation of her book “Thinking In Pictures,” where she interviewed a lot of people about how they think. She definitely persevered in life and used her skills as a platform to help others understand autism. She has earned numerous awards and currently, she consults for big companies like McDonald’s, Swift, Burger King, and others.

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