Perhaps one of the most famous figures known to have dyslexia is Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 and has become synonymous with intelligence and wit.
Some teachers and parents can mistake a dyslexic child for someone who is lacking intelligence. But the truth is dyslexia has nothing to do with a child's level of intelligence.
Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Leonardo da Vinci, and Pablo Picasso possessed some of the greatest minds and talents in history and they were dyslexic.
Sir Richard Branson, a billionaire and the head of Virgin Industries, made his first million by the age of 18. He is dyslexic. Walt Disney, and Donald Winkler, former CEO of Ford Credit, are other very successful people with learning disabilities. Famous people with Learning Disabilities . More on dyslexia .
Tom Holland (dyslexia)
He also has dyslexia. In an interview with 11-year old YouTuber Jazzy, he talked about how it's important to give yourself all the time you need to read and understand. “It's just about taking your time, and giving yourself an appropriate amount of time to do the things you need to do,” he said.
Perhaps one of the most famous figures known to have dyslexia is Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 and has become synonymous with intelligence and wit.
Though there's no cure for dyslexia, early assessment and intervention result in the best outcome. Sometimes dyslexia goes undiagnosed for years and isn't recognized until adulthood, but it's never too late to seek help.
In a survey of 69,000 self-made millionaires, 40% of entrepreneurs were found to show signs of dyslexia. Helen Boden, CEO of the British Dyslexia Association, points to the ability of people with dyslexia to identify key opportunities and create solutions to obstacles faster than their peers.
Dyslexic brains process information differently. We are naturally creative, good at problem solving and talented communicators. Our heightened abilities in areas like visualisation and logical reasoning skills and natural entrepreneurial traits bring a fresh and intuitive perspective.
“Twenty-five percent of CEOs are dyslexic, but many don't want to talk about it,” Chambers, who was Cisco's CEO between 1995 and 2005, told students at MIT last Thursday. It's not clear where Chambers sourced his claim, but the proportion appears to gel with various pieces of research conducted on the topic.
Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924, (learning disability)
28th President of the United States from 1913-1921 who is known to have a (learning disability) (dyslexia). World War I leader awarded Nobel Peace Prize for Versailles Treaty, 1919, domestic reforms included 1914 creation of Federal Reserve.
One of the more advantageous qualities in many dyslexic people is their ability to think outside of the box. They come up with excellent, unorthodox ideas that are not only fresh, but lucrative as well. Critical thinkers: Another trait that some dyslexics possess is their ability to use logical reasoning.
Pablo Picasso
After enrolling at the Barcelona School of Art, Picasso's skill went from strength to strength, and it's been suggested that his dyslexia experience may have inspired the reversed and disjointed images that his work has become so famous for.
People with dyslexia have the ability to see how things connect to form complex systems, and to identify similarities among multiple things. Such strengths are likely to be of particular significance for fields like science and mathematics, where pictures are key.
Dyslexia can affect short term memory, so your partner may forget a conversation, a task they have promised to do, or important dates. They may also struggle to remember the names of people they have met or how to get to places they have visited before.
We often define dyslexia as an “unexpected difficulty in reading”; however, a dyslexic student may also have difficulty with math facts although they are often able to understand and do higher level math quite well.
Some of these successful entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson and Charles Schwab, credit their success to dyslexia as one of the contributing factors that lead to the development of their innovative thinking and their remarkable success.
Brilliant Visual Spatial Reasoning
Researchers at the University of East London found that many people with dyslexia demonstrate better skills at manipulating 3D objects, and remembering virtual environments when compared to non-dyslexics.
Living With Dyslexia
This does not mean that those who suffer from dyslexia automatically become geniuses, but it also does not mean that they are individuals with an intellectual inferior to that of the rest of the population.
Children and adults of all intellectual abilities can be affected by dyslexia. The exact cause of dyslexia is unknown, but it often appears to run in families. It's thought certain genes inherited from your parents may act together in a way that affects how some parts of the brain develop during early life.
Dyslexia is typically diagnosed when a child first goes to school and experiences difficulties with these skills. But as a lifelong condition, symptoms can and do persist into adulthood. Dyslexia in adults, much as is the case in children, can manifest in different and unexpected ways.
It's true that dyslexia can lead to specific math challenges. For instance, kids with dyslexia might have trouble with math word problems and with reading names of numbers. But when kids have a pattern of trouble with numbers and math, dyslexia typically isn't the cause.
Dyslexia is recognised in Australian under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) and under the Human Rights Commission.
People often confuse dyslexia and autism for one another or conflate them for their similarities. But they are two completely different disorders that affect the brains of people in different ways. While dyslexia is a learning difficulty, autism is a developmental disorder.
Dyslexia symptoms don't 'get worse' with age. That said, the longer children go without support, the more challenging it is for them to overcome their learning difficulties. A key reason for this is that a child's brain plasticity decreases as they mature. This impacts how quickly children adapt to change.