Mary Temple Grandin was born on August 29, 1947. She is an American academic, inventor, and scientist who studies animal behavior. She is well known for supporting kind treatment of animals raised for food and has written more than 60 scientific papers about how animals act and think. Grandin advises the livestock industry on how to care for animals properly.

She is one of the first people with autism to share how her personal experiences with autism helped her understand the world. She teaches at Colorado State University in the Animal Sciences department within the College of Agricultural Sciences.

In 2010, she was listed in the "Heroes" category of Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people worldwide. A biographical film about her life, Temple Grandin, won awards for excellence in television and film.

Early life

Mary Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a wealthy family. Because one of the family's employees was also named Mary, Grandin was called by her middle name, Temple, to avoid confusion. Temple's mother, Anna Eustacia Purves (later Cutler), was an actress, singer, and granddaughter of John Coleman Purves, who co-invented the aviation autopilot. She earned a degree in English from Harvard University. Temple's father, Richard McCurdy Grandin, was a real estate agent and heir to Grandin Farms, the largest corporate wheat farm business in the United States at the time. Grandin's parents divorced when she was 15, and her mother later married Ben Cutler, a New York saxophonist, in 1965 when Grandin was 18.

Grandin has three younger siblings: two sisters and a brother. One of her sisters has dyslexia. Her younger sister is an artist, another sister is a sculptor, and her brother is a banker. John Livingston Grandin, Temple's paternal great-grandfather, and his brother, William James Grandin, were French Huguenots who drilled for oil. John Grandin planned to meet with John D. Rockefeller but left the meeting after waiting too long. The brothers later entered banking and received thousands of acres of land in North Dakota as debt collateral after Jay Cooke's firm collapsed. They established wheat farming in the Red River Valley and built dormitories for workers. The town of Grandin, North Dakota, is named after John Livingston Grandin.

Although raised in the Episcopal Church, Grandin stopped believing in a personal god or intentional design early in life and instead focused on scientific explanations.

Grandin was not officially diagnosed with autism until adulthood. At age two, she was diagnosed with "brain damage," but this was later disproven through brain imaging at the University of Utah when she was 63. When Grandin was a teenager, her mother found an autism diagnostic checklist and suspected Grandin had autism. Later, it was confirmed that Grandin was an autistic savant.

When Grandin was a toddler, doctors often recommended institutionalization for children with her diagnosis. This caused disagreement between her parents, as her father supported the idea, while her mother opposed it. Her mother took her to Boston Children's Hospital, where a neurologist suggested speech therapy. A speech therapist was hired, and Grandin began personalized training at age two and a half. Her mother also hired a nanny to help her at age three-and-a-half. Grandin started kindergarten at Dedham Country Day School, where teachers and classmates worked to support her needs.

Grandin has said she was fortunate to have supportive teachers from an early age but described junior high and high school as the most difficult times in her life.

Grandin attended Beaver Country Day School from seventh to ninth grade but was expelled at age 14 for throwing a book at a classmate who teased her. She described herself as the "nerdy kid" who was often mocked. Students sometimes called her a "tape recorder" because she repeated phrases. In 2012, she said, "I could laugh about it now, but back then it really hurt."

The year after her expulsion, Grandin's parents divorced. Three years later, her mother married Ben Cutler. At 15, Grandin spent a summer on Ben Cutler's sister's ranch in Arizona, which influenced her future career.

After being expelled from Beaver Country Day School, Grandin's mother enrolled her at Hampshire Country School in Rindge, New Hampshire. The school was founded in 1948 by Boston child psychologist Henry Patey for students with exceptional potential who struggled in traditional settings. Grandin was accepted and became Winter Carnival Queen and captain of the hockey team.

Some sources mention different names for the schools Grandin attended, such as Beaver Country Day School or Cherry Falls Girls' School (named in her book Emergence: Labeled Autistic) and Hampshire Country School or Mountain Day School (named in her early books).

At Hampshire Country School, Grandin met William Carlock, a science teacher who worked for NASA. He became her mentor and helped her build confidence. Carlock encouraged Grandin to develop her idea for a squeeze machine (hug box) after she returned from a summer on her aunt's farm in Arizona. At age 18, while still attending Hampshire Country School, Grandin built the hug box with support from Carlock and Henry Patey, the school's founder.

Carlock continued to support Grandin after she left the school. Henry Patey, president of Franklin Pierce College, allowed Grandin to enroll without traditional high school records. When Grandin faced criticism for her hug box at Franklin Pierce College, Carlock advised her to conduct scientific experiments to test its effectiveness. His guidance helped Grandin focus her intense interest in the hug box into a productive project, which became widely recognized as evidence of her abilities.

After graduating from Hampshire Country School in 1966, Grandin earned a bachelor's degree in human psychology from Franklin Pierce College in 1970, a master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1989. In 1990, Dr. Grandin became a professor at Colorado State University and has taught in the Department of Animal Sciences there ever since.

Career

Steve Silberman wrote in his book NeuroTribes that Temple Grandin helped reduce the shame and stigma around autism because she was one of the first adults to openly share that she was autistic. Bernard Rimland, a father of an autistic child and author of Infantile Autism, wrote the introduction to Grandin’s first book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, which was published in 1986. Rimland wrote that Grandin’s ability to share her feelings and explain how her mind works gives readers a better understanding of autism.

In Developing Talents, 2nd Edition, Grandin discusses parts of job training programs for people with disabilities and Social Security programs that help with work-related support.

In her 1995 book Thinking in Pictures, the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote in the introduction that the book helped people understand a different kind of thinking.

In her early writings, Grandin described herself as a "recovered autistic," and Rimland used the term "recovered autistic individual" in his introduction. Later, Grandin stopped using this description. Steve Silberman wrote that Grandin realized she was not "recovered" but had learned to adapt to social rules.

When Thinking in Pictures was published in 1995, Grandin believed all autistic people thought in visual images like she did. By the time the 2006 edition was released, she realized not all autistic people think the same way. She identified three types of thinking: 1. Visual Thinkers, who imagine detailed pictures; 2. Music and Math Thinkers, who see patterns and may excel in math or computer programming; and 3. Verbal Logic Thinkers, who focus on words and may enjoy subjects like history.

In The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum (2013), Grandin expanded on these three types of thinking. This book also includes a review of scientific studies showing that visual thinking is different from spatial skills. An earlier book, Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism (2001), by Clara Claiborne Park, influenced Grandin’s ideas about pattern thinking.

Grandin became well-known outside the autistic community after Oliver Sacks wrote about her in his book An Anthropologist on Mars (1995). The title refers to how Grandin feels around people who are not autistic. In the mid-1980s, Grandin first spoke publicly about autism at the request of Ruth C. Sullivan, a founder of the Autism Society of America.

Based on her experiences, Grandin supports early help for autistic children and teachers who can guide their interests into useful skills. She has described being sensitive to loud noises and other sensory details. She says she thinks "totally in pictures" and uses her strong visual memory to imagine scenes. Grandin credits her success in designing humane livestock facilities to her ability to remember details. She compares her memory to full movies in her mind that she can replay and adjust.

Grandin does not support removing autism genes completely or treating people she calls "mildly" autistic. However, she believes severely disabled, nonverbal autistic children need therapies like applied behavioral analysis to function. She wrote in Thinking in Pictures that in an ideal world, scientists would find ways to prevent the most severe forms of autism while allowing milder forms to exist. In a 2022 update to her website, Grandin rejected claims that her views were related to eugenics.

Grandin criticized changes to autism diagnoses in the 2013 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In a 2022 interview, she said she did not want to discuss the topic further.

For about 15 years after a 1998 study falsely linked autism to the MMR vaccine, Grandin thought there might be a connection between vaccines and autism, especially in children who stopped speaking after vaccination. She did not revisit this topic in a 2022 interview with The New York Times, even though the interviewer asked repeatedly.

Every March, Grandin hosts an event at Boston University.

In 1980, Grandin published two scientific articles about cattle behavior during handling. She was among the first scientists to report that animals are affected by visual distractions, such as shadows or chains, in handling facilities. When she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, she studied how the environment affects pigs. Her dissertation was titled Effect of Rearing Environment and Environmental Enrichment on the Behavior and Neural Development in Young Pigs. She expanded these ideas in her book Animals Make Us Human.

In 1993, Grandin edited the first edition of Livestock Handling and Transport. She wrote three chapters and included contributions from scientists worldwide. Later editions were published in 2000, 2007, 2014, 2019, and 2024. As a professor at Colorado State University, her student Bridgett Voisinet studied how calm cattle gain more weight. This research was published in 1997 and introduced a new idea in the industry.

Grandin also wrote a paper titled Assessment of Stress During Handling and Transport (1997), which showed that an animal’s past experiences with handling can affect how it reacts to future handling.

Grandin designed a system called a "center track (double rail) conveyor restrainer" to hold cattle during processing at large beef plants. The first system was installed in the mid-1980s for calves, and a version for large cattle was created in 1990. This system is widely used today.

Personal life

Temple Grandin has written in her books about how autism influences all areas of her life. She wears clothing that feels comfortable to help manage her sensory processing issues and has arranged her daily life to avoid overstimulation from too many sensory experiences. She takes medicine for depression but no longer uses her squeeze machine. In February 2010, she explained, "It broke two years ago, and I never got around to fixing it. I'm into hugging people now."

While attending a boarding school, Grandin chose to live without romantic or sexual relationships. During a 2013 interview with The New York Times, she said, "Now I'm old enough that my sexual desires have faded, and I'm glad they're gone."

Honors

In 2010, Grandin was listed in the Time 100, a group of the world’s 100 most influential people, in the "Heroes" category. In 2011, she received the Double Helix Medal. She has been honored with honorary degrees from several universities, including McGill University in Canada (1999), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (2009), Carnegie Mellon University in the United States (2012), and Emory University (2016). In 2015, she became an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.

In 2011, Grandin was given the Ashoka Fellowship. In 2012, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, the Texas Trail of Fame, and the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. In 2015, she received a Meritorious Achievement Award from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

In 2016, Grandin was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

In 2023, Grandin received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Iowa State University and later an honorary Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Kansas State University. This was her first DVM degree.

On November 15, 2025, Grandin was honored with the National Portrait Gallery’s Portrait of a Nation Award. The award recognizes individuals for their transformative contributions to American history and culture. Claire Danes presented the award to her. The National Portrait Gallery commissioned artist David Lenz to paint Grandin’s portrait for inclusion in the Gallery’s collection.

Media

Temple Grandin has appeared on many well-known television programs, including It's Your Health with Lisa Davis, Primetime Live on ABC, The Today Show, Larry King Live, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She has also been written about in several publications, such as Time magazine, People magazine, Discover magazine, Forbes, and The New York Times. A BBC documentary titled The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow (2006) and an episode of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee (2006) focused on her life. She was also the subject of the first episode in the First Person series by Errol Morris.

A semi-biographical HBO film titled Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes, was released in 2010. The film received 15 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won seven, including Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Claire Danes. At the 68th Golden Globe Awards in 2011, Claire Danes won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film.

Grandin was included in the 2006 documentary Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the Brain, produced by Colourfield Tell-A-Vision, a German company. In 2010, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2011, she appeared in an episode of the Science documentary series Ingenious Minds. In 2018, she was featured in the documentary This Business of Autism, which explored autism employment and success stories, such as Spectrum Designs Foundation.

Grandin was mentioned in Michael Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, where she discussed the livestock industry. A folk-punk band named AJJ included two songs titled "Temple Grandin" and "Temple Grandin Too" on their 2006 album Christmas Island. In 2017, a children’s book titled The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: A Story of Temple Grandin was written by Julia Finlay Mosca.

In 2018, Grandin was profiled in the book Rescuing Ladybugs by Jennifer Skiff, who called her a "global hero" for advocating for better treatment of animals in farming. In 2023, a children’s book titled I Am Temple Grandin was published by Brad Meltzer and Chris Eliopoulos as part of the "Ordinary People Change the World" series. The book was later adapted into an episode of the PBS show Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum.