Discover the Best Books Written by Temple Grandin

Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American academic and animal behaviorist. She is a prominent proponent of the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry, offering advice on animal behavior and being an autism spokesperson. Grandin is one of the first autistic people to document the insights she gained from her personal experience of autism. 

She is currently a faculty member of Animal Sciences in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University. In 2010, Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people globally, named her in the "Heroes" category. She was the subject of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning biographical film Temple Grandin. Grandin has been an outspoken proponent of autism rights and neurodiversity movements.

Mary Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a very wealthy family. One of the employees of the family was also named Mary, so Grandin was referred to by her middle name, Temple, to avoid confusion. Her mother is Anna Eustacia Purves (now Cutler), an actress, singer, and granddaughter of John Coleman Purves (co-inventor of the aviation autopilot). She also has a degree in English from Harvard University.

Her father was Richard McCurdy Grandin, a real estate agent and heir to the largest corporate wheat farm business in the United States at the time, Grandin Farms. Grandin's parents divorced when she was 15, and her mother eventually went on to marry Ben Cutler, a renowned New York saxophonist, in 1965, when Grandin was 18 years old. Grandin's father died in California in 1993.

Grandin has three younger siblings: two sisters and a brother. Grandin has described one of her sisters as being dyslexic. Her younger sister is an artist, her other 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. He intended to cut a deal with John D. Rockefeller in a meeting, but the latter kept him waiting too long, so he walked out before Rockefeller arrived. 

Then the brothers went into banking, and when Jay Cooke's firm collapsed, they received thousands of acres of undeveloped land in North Dakota as debt collateral. They set up wheat farming in the Red River Valley and housed the workers in dormitories. The town of Grandin, North Dakota, is named after John Livingston Grandin. Although raised in the Episcopal Church early on, Temple Grandin gave up on believing in a personal deity or intention in favor of what she considers a more scientific perspective.