All my life I've been told that Humphry Davy is my ancestor. He was a quirky fellow as summed up in this wikipedia quote:
"Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he “had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age,” and Southey said that “he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art.” In spite of his ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to hear him “to increase his stock of metaphors.” The dominating ambition of his life was to achieve fame, but though that sometimes betrayed him into petty jealousy, it did not leave him insensible to the claims on his knowledge of the “cause of humanity,” to use a phrase often employed by him in connection with his invention of the miners' lamp."
Irritable, enthusiastic, imaginative, ungainly, peculiar, ingenius, rapid, frank - all these characteristics could be attributed to someone with Aspergers. But my favorite of these descriptions is:
"Of the smaller observances of etiquette he was careless, and his frankness of disposition sometimes exposed him to annoyances which he might have avoided by the exercise of ordinary tact."
Humphry could have saved himself much annoyance, if only he had shown some etiquette or tact. This quote paints a picture of Humphry that I understand completely.
Aspergers runs in my family. Could it have all started with this brilliant yet irritable dude?