Baron-Cohen, Simon
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Commentary
I started work in 1981 as a teacher of children with autism in a small unit called Family Tree, in North London. I then studied for a PhD at University College London and the MRC Cognitive Development Unit. I moved from there to the Institute of Psychiatry in London to train as a clinical psychologist. After this I held lectureships at UCL and the Institute of Psychiatry, until moving to Cambridge University in 1994, where I founded the Autism Research Center.
My principal interest all through this period has been to understand autism from the psychological and biological perspectives. When I began in this field there were just a handful of scientists interested in this topic. Thankfully today there are significantly many more than this, leading to new knowledge being acquired more quickly.
A fascinating historical shift has been from viewing autism as a relatively rare condition (20 years ago) to seeing it as a relatively common condition (today). From 4 in 10,000, to 1 in 300. Why?
Written by: Simon Baron-Cohen