British researcher Judith Gould:

Andy Warhol may have been autistic

Self portrait by Andy Warhol. Source: The Andy Warhol Museum.

LONDON (Reuters/Variety) - Late pop artist Andy Warhol may have been high-functioning autistic, according to a leading autism expert in Great Britain.

"It is fascinating how many of the things he did are typical of autism," said Dr. Judith Gould, director of Elliot House, Britain's leading diagnostic center for autism.

She pointed to his social ineptitude, love of uniformity, minimum use of speech and obsessive attention to detail as classic symptoms.

Also:
	Was Andy Warhol autistic? (Observer; 14 March)

"I would say, from the study I have seen, that Warhol almost certainly had Asperger syndrome," said Gould, speaking to Sunday's Observer newspaper. She believed that the autism spectrum is often associated with prodigious talent and even with artistic genius.

Warhol, famed for his depictions of pop icons ranging from Elvis Presley to Campbell Soup cans, died in 1987 after a routine gall bladder operation.

InternAUT adds: Another leading autism researcher, Christopher Gillberg at the Childhood Psychiatric Clinic in Gothenburg, Sweden, devotes a chapter on the historical philosopher and mathematician Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) in his 1997 book Barn, ungdomar och vuxna med Asperger syndrom (Children, adolescents and adults with Asperger syndrome).

Gillberg concludes that Wittgenstein must have had Asperger syndrome, a form of high functioning autism.

"Other well-known names that (on good grounds) are discussed in connection with the diagnosis Asperger syndrome are Einstein, Kandinskij, Satie, Bruckner and Bartók.", Gillberg writes in the same chapter.