Colourful characters: fame, genius, memory and synaesthesia.

Is the letter E always blue, or yellow in your mind’s eye? Is the numeral 5 purple-coloured with the personality of a slightly sleazy man in his 40s, facing toward your right side? Do some pieces of music or singing voices often create a sensation of colour, images or fragrance? Is your mental conceptualisation of the months of the year always arranged in an oval shape, angled away from you? Does your mind have vivid annotated calendars going back to your childhood, arranged in space? Can you identify musical notes by their colours or flavours? Congratulations! You have something fascinating in common with some of the most brilliant and original minds to have ever graced this planet! Sounds like you are a synaesthete, one of us. 

Tests of various types of synaesthesia can be found here. The Synesthesia Battery  

Synesthesia is often framed in popular television shows and pop science writing as a disabling, confusing, mixed-up abnormality in brain functioning. Certainly, some autistic, blind or disabled people will have one or other type of synaesthesia, simply because synaesthesia, as a category of anomalous mental experiences, is common. Researchers have found any type of synaesthesia in around 2% to 4% of the general population, with both sexes equally likely to experience synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is no more of a disability than being left-handed or same-sex attracted.

Multiple studies that have found associations between various types of memory superiority and various types of synaesthesia are evidence that synaesthesia is a memory phenomenon, not a sensory phenomenon, as it is often described. I myself am a super-recogniser, which is an elite level of memory for human faces (a specialised type of visual pattern-recognition) and I experience multiple types of synaesthesia. Coloured concepts such as alphabet letters or months is a category of synaesthesia that runs in our family, along with elite and precocious natural talent in reading, writing and spelling that gets children into gifted and talented programs in school systems. A type of synaesthesia that I do not have, visualisation of units of time in space, such as time-lines or literal cycles of years or months, has been found by researchers to be associated with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, another interesting elite memory ability. One person studied by researchers who experiences time unit synaesthesia and HSAM can be found in this list. 

Another aspect of synaesthesia calls into question the idea of it as “mixed up senses”. The most common types of synaesthesia do NOT involve odd connections between different senses, obviously! Musical sounds evoking colours could be thought of as a mixing of the senses of sound and vision, but most types of synaesthesia are anomalous connections between sensory and CONCEPTUAL experiences. Perceiving the letter E as yellow connects the concept of E with the colour yellow. It has nothing to do with “mixed up senses”. The fact that university researchers and authors constantly repeat the obviously wrong and quite insulting idea of synaesthesia as “mixed up senses” and a "scrambled brain" just goes to show how plain stupid many educated and articulate non-synaesthetes really are. 

Researchers believe the physical basis of synaesthesia is adult brains that have more synaptic connections than the average adult brain, due to less synaptic pruning. Synaptic pruning is a set of stages in normal brain development that happen in childhood and young adulthood. Less synaptic pruning can result in the retention of linkages between mental functions not normally found in grown-ups. I admit there is something a bit silly and childish about perceiving numerals and letters of the alphabet as having personalities and colours. But I believe this variation in brain development can bring important intellectual gifts to adult minds. Enhanced connectivity in visual and conceptual brain functioning can enable greater visual pattern recognition, as in my natural elite face recognition ability, and also in conceptual pattern recognition, enabling some of us to recognise analogies and connections between concepts: scientific, historical, artistic, technical. This opens up opportunities in innovation, invention and artistic exploration that can’t be quantified or predicted. The fact that this list includes some of the most brilliant, innovative and original thinkers and creators of all time shows that the synaesthete mind can be an incredibly powerful tool, once educated and given the opportunity to work creatively.

This list is based on the lists of famous synesthetes compiled by synesthesia authority Sean Day, the writing of other synaesthesia researchers and academics, the Wikipedia article titled List of People With Synesthesia, and my own research.

My approach towards identifying famous cases of synaesthesia could be described as Bayesian. In making judgements and speculations I have kept in mind the probability of any non-famous person having synaesthesia, and it is not as low as some synaesthesia researchers have previously claimed. Recent scientific research (and research from the 1800s) has shown that synaesthesia is not a rare condition, and because of this I feel no need to take an extremely sceptical view of evidence of synaesthesia in famous people.

Contents 

Famous Synesthetes With Various Occupations or Backgrounds

Famous Synesthetes in Acting, Cinema or Theatre

Synesthetes Famous for Memory or Mental Calculation Feats 

Famous Synesthetes in Literature, Journalism or Writing

Famous Synesthete Artists

Famous Synesthete Musicians

P-P – Denotes those who have been reported as having or having had perfect pitch/absolute pitch ability. 

L-H – Denotes those who have been reported as being left-handed or originally left-handed, or who appear to be left-handed in photographs.

R-H – Denotes those who have been reported as being right-handed or who appear to be right-handed in photographs.

A – Denotes those who have been identified in any published source as a definite or possible case of any condition that is on the autistic spectrum, including Asperger syndrome.

M – Denotes those who have been reported as having been married or in a long-term relationship at any time.

H – Denotes those who have been reported as being homosexual or bisexual, or reported as identifying themselves as homosexual or bisexual. 

Famous Synesthetes with Various Occupations or Backgrounds

Jake Barnett - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tasting-the-universe/201305/the-spark-and-synesthesia

(Paul) Eugen Bleuler 1857-1939, Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer of psychiatry. He coined the terms “schizophrenia”, “autismus” (English translation – autism), and “schizoid” but he used the term “autismus” to define symptoms of schizophrenia, which is not the current usage of this term. Bleuler was also one of the researchers in the 1800s who wrote about synaesthesia, co-writing a book (in German) on the subject that was published two years before Galton's Inquiries into human faculty and its development. According to a review published in the scientific journal Nature in 1881, of the book that Bleuler co-authored with Karl Lehmann, Bleuler experienced colours after hearing or thinking about words and vowels, and he also had many relatives with the same condition. The modern term for this type of synaesthesia is “phoneme-color synesthesia” or “phoneme-colour synaesthesia”. The discovery of Bleuler’s synaesthesia inspired Bleuler and Lehmann (a non-synaesthete) to write the book. At the time they were both medical students in Zurich. Sir Francis Galton made reference to Bleuler and Lehmann’s book on pages 106-107 of his book Inquiries into human faculty and its development, “One of the authors had the faculty [synaesthesia] very strongly, and the other had not…” (Galton 1883).

Sir Robert Cailliau b. 1947, Belgian computer scientist who developed the World Wide Web with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Dr Cailliau worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) from 1974 to 2007, in 2004 he was made a Commander in the Order of King Leopold. The Order of Leopold is the highest Order of Belgium. Cailliau's grapheme- colour synaesthesia influenced his choice of colour for the logo for the World Wide Web, Dr Cailliau is an atheist. R-H?

Albert Einstein – little finger?

H. V. "Doc" Evatt QC KStJ 1894-1965, also known and “Bert” Evatt, President of the United Nations General Assembly 1948-1949, co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, leader of the Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition, Attorney-General of Australia, Minister of External Affairs, Justice of the High Court of Australia, Chief Justice of New South Wales. Evatt’s cross-examination of a key ASIO operative in the Royal Commission into the Petrov affair caused great discomfort for the Menzies Government and Evatt’s leave to appear in the commission was withdrawn.  As Leader of the Opposition in 1951 Evatt's successful campaign opposing PM Menzies' proposed referendum to ban the Communist Party in Australia was a pivotal moment in civil rights and free speech in Australia. In 1955 the communists would again indirectly prompt Evatt to make history, when he confronted a staunchly anti-communist Catholic faction within the ALP, who then split and formed a new political party, which would be named the Democratic Labor Party DLP in 1957. In 1955 the ALP suffered a wipeout in the federal election. Evatt, Billy Hughes and Mark Latham were cited as mad past ALP leaders in an essay in The Monthly by Annabel Crabb (Crabb 2011). Evatt has been described by some as the greatest prime minister we never had.

Evatt was one of the most complex, mysterious, argued over and important figures in Australian history. Sadly, when his time as ALP leader ended he apparently left behind few friends and his mental performance declined in an illness that is still not understood with certainty. His post-politics job as NSW Chief Justice was not a success. He passed away in 1965.

Evatt had a brilliant mind, “a highly retentive memory” (p.9 Crockett 1993), “a colossal intellectual curiosity” (Kim Beasley quoted in Tennant 1970 p.99), “egocentricity” (Crockett 1993 p.28), an often disagreeable and sometimes awkward or hateful personality, a terrible fear of flying (not a good phobia for a wartime Foreign Minister to have) and many eccentricities. In a documentary Evatt was described as “consumed with ambition” and a “prima donna”. Evatt was born with a large head (Tennant 1970 p.5). His father died when he was six years old and he and older siblings were raised by his mother. Evatt was an “obsessive high achiever” academically and was dux of his school (1995 documentary). He played a variety of sports in his life and genuinely loved sport and children. He also enjoyed the finer things in life such as classical music, jazz and art. He could play the piano and would take sheet music to classical music concerts to read with an enthusiastic enjoyment of the music. 

Evatt’s wife was a painter and Evatt was a supporter of the modern art movement in Australia. Evatt and his wife had two children, both adopted, and a devoted relationship. Evatt’s energy was not directed toward personal presentation. His hair and dress have been described as “studied dishevelment” and his voice a monotone with a “broad Australian twang” (Crockett 1993 p.168). Evatt was a large man, which could have been a cause of his fatal arteriosclerosis. He drank in moderation and rarely smoked. Possibly Evatt had undiagnosed asthma, as he was distressed by cigarette smoke (Crockett 1993 p.39) and had “frequent respiratory disturbances” (Crockett 1993 p.24). “He slept little in order to meet a massive and diverse workload...” (Crockett 1993 p.41) but inexplicably would sometimes receive guests in bed while fully clothed. Evatt was an important advocate of human rights but often showed little respect for individuals, and expressed a disdain of the idea of respect (Crockett 1993 p. 37). Evatt was an eccentric user of telephones. He would habitually end telephone conversations by simply hanging up (Crockett 1993 p.155), and Evatt’s phone calls were sometimes very long or made at odd hours. Evatt could be a bit of a phone-stalker, combining his capacity for great persistence when pursuing a political end with communications technology.

It appears that Peter Crockett, the author of the interesting but at times annoyingly Freudian 1993 biography Evatt: a life deserves the credit as the only writer to publish an original description of Evatt’s synaesthesia (coloured days of the week), even though Crockett did not describe it as such (p.9 Crockett 1993). The source of this information was a 1986 letter from Frank Hinder, an Australian artist in Evatt’s painter wife’s social set. This letter also stated that Evatt “...complained that he was unable to visualise a certain well-known street corner”, which could be interpreted as evidence of agnosia for scenes, a neurological disability in recognizing landscapes. Evatt appears to have been right-handed.

In the mid-fifties, during Evatt’s political career, there was speculation about his mental health among members of the ALP Caucus, probably as a response to Evatt’s increasing suspiciousness. Opinions from psychiatrist friends were sought, but no appropriate label was found (Murray 1972 p.169). It is important to remember that Evatt’s death in the mid-60s is believed to have been due to arteriosclerosis, and it is thought this was the cause of his increasingly odd behaviour and intellectual decline from the late 1950s. Evatt was personally unpopular with many of the people he worked with. Asperger syndrome has been suggested as an explanation for Evatt's exceptional mind, complex personality and eccentricities. In the 1994 biography Doc Evatt by Buckley, Dale and Reynolds it is argued that Evatt might have been a closet epileptic with "partial seizures". The evidence given, in some ways similar to the Wikileaks “Cablegate” leaks, was a diplomatic cable sent by Evatt from Washington to Canberra, relaying a message to a Sydney neurosurgeon "Agree with your diagnosis. Might try combination of Luminal and Dilantin." Both of these drugs are used to treat epilepsy, a varied group of brain disorders of which some can alter the emotions and personality. M. R-H.

Richard Feynman 1918-1988, American physicist and academic, jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, a pioneer in the fields of quantum computing and nanotechnology, a keen popularizer of physics and wrote some popular semi-autobiographical books. Feynman’s synaesthesia is described in his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? According to one biographer Feynman used LSD, but this does not explain Feynman’s synaesthesia, which was the grapheme-colour type, which is not a psychedelic experience. According to a group of researchers from Hannover Medical School, synaesthesia associated with sequences such as letters, numbers and weekdays are never found in drug-induced synaesthesia (Sinke et al 2010). Feynman was a late speaker, not uttering a word up to the age of 3. In his book The hidden sense van Campen identified Feynman and Einstein as two famous physicists who used visual thinking to solve theoretical puzzles. Einstein was also very delayed in his early speech development. The idea that Feynman was a "visual thinker", which synaesthetes are thought to be, was possibly undermined by Feynman's observations about the different ways that people think which he shared on the BBC TV series Fun to Imagine, which can be viewed on YouTube. Richard Feynman had trouble telling left from right, using a mole on his left hand as a guide (McManus 2002 p. 66). He has been described as a free spirit and an eccentric with a great sense of humour. One source identifies Feynman as possibly a left-hander (Wright 2007). L-H?, M.

 

Sigmund Freud founder of psychotherapy, "godless Jew", episode of tickertape? Page 62 Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

William James identified as possible space-time synaesthetes by Claudia Hammond in her 2012 book Time Warped on p.122.

John Locke identified as possible space-time synaesthetes by Claudia Hammond in her 2012 book Time Warped on p.122

Frederic Malle perfumer http://www.psfk.com/2013/01/frederic-malle-perfume-2.html

Pythagoras of Samos c. 570 - 495 BC, Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and founder of a religious movement, best known for the Pythagorean Theorem. In their 2009 book Wednesday is indigo blue synesthesia researchers Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman reported that Pythagoras had “number -> personality synesthesia” or ordinal linguistic personification (OLP). This is based on information on page 35 of the book The philosophers of Greece by historian Robert Brumbaugh which can be read through Google Books. For Pythagoras each number had its own personality and a gender. M?

John Lewis Roget 1828–1908, lawyer, visual artist, co-author of Roget’s Thesaurus and son of Peter Mark Roget FRS who was a British physician, lexicographer, natural theologian, lecturer and inventor, but was best known as the original author of the Thesaurus of English words and phrases (Roget’s Thesaurus). Peter Mark Roget had an obsession with compiling lists from the age of 8. He was also obsessed with classifying. John Roget has been described as a “classifying and arranging machine” (Kendall quoted in Cowen 2009). Peter Mark Roget’s biographer Joshua Kendall has argued that Peter Mark Roget’s list-making was a strategy to ward off depression, but other writers have argued that Asperger syndrome is a more likely explanation (Cowen 2009, McGrath 2008). It has also been argued that Peter Mark Roget had OCD, and there appears to have been a history of depression in his family. After Peter Mark Roget’s death, work on the thesaurus was continued by his son John Lewis Roget and John’s son Samuel Romilly Roget, an engineer. In an 1881 paper by Sir Francis Galton FRS about “visualised numerals” which is now known as visuo-spatial synaesthesia, John Roget is one of the men of science who see “numerals in Forms” whose experiences were described by Galton. M.

Jani (January, Janni) Schofield b. 2002, Jani came to fame as a young intellectually gifted Californian girl who has been given the diagnosis of "child-onset schizophrenia" by a psychiatrist at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), but reportedly did not respond to treatment. As a vulnerable child she was the centre of a media circus. Jani has been featured on the Oprah TV show, has appeared on ABC News’ 20/20 TV show and Australian 60 Minutes, and has also been featured in a number of articles in the Los Angeles Times. Jani’s parents have a website recounting Jani’s life in detail, which solicits for donations for Jani. Her father has been commissioned to write a book about Jani. Jani reportedly has an IQ of 146, but has never attended a normal classroom for any length of time. Jani has been institutionalized seven times in psychiatric hospitals. Jani has been described by the media and her parents as suicidal and violent, but she could reportedly behave well and show stability when doing things that she enjoyed, such as when people engaged her in mental stimulation. Jani would display tics and flaps her hands, but a diagnosis of autism or Asperger syndrome was reportedly considered but rejected by clinicians.

Jani's diagnosis of child-onset schizophrenia appears to be based upon the fantasy/imaginary/delusional world that Jani enjoyed living in a lot of the time. Jani even had a name for this place - the island of Calalini. Jani claimed to have many strange friends (who only exist in her mind), who reportedly bit and scratched her. In her earlier years these “friends” took the form of rats, cats and playmates with names that unaccountably were units of measurement, numbers or items that belong in learned linear sequences. For example, Jani’s imaginary friends included rats named Wednesday, 200 and Saturn, a cat named 61, and girls named 100 degrees and 24 hours. In December 2009 it was reported that Jani’s “hallucinations” had become personified numbers. This would appear to be a clear case of ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP), which is a form of synesthesia/synaesthesia in which items that are learned in ordered sequences are associated with specific personalities. Synesthesia is a generally harmless neurological condition. The December 2009 Los Angeles Times article contains a hint that Jani’s “hallucinations” display a consistency that is the hallmark of genuine synesthesia “She told me her hallucinations always wear the same clothes.” Another hint that Jani experiences OLP is her violent objection to being called by her full first name. Jani reportedly hates the name "January". Is this because her OLP associations with this month of the year clash with her self-image, or are simply not liked by her? Synesthesia is an inherited condition. One has to wonder at the coincidence in which a child who appears to have OLP has been given a month of the year for a first name, and months of the year are a group of concepts that are often involved in synaesthesia, with colour or spatial associations in the minds of synaesthetes.

One could possibly argue that Jani does not have OLP because the personification of her imaginary companions goes beyond the limits of the typically reported experience of OLP – Jani’s companions reportedly talk to her, move and even bite her. It is hard to judge whether Jani’s accounts are a combination of OLP and imagination, or could possibly be confabulation to explain a confusing experience of OLP juxtaposed with other neurological conditions or sensory types of synesthesia. According to the Jani’s Journey website Jani “experiences hallucinations in four of her five senses.” Another possible difference between Jani’s experiences and OLP is that Jani’s personifications have involved animals, while I am not aware of any report of OLP that does not involve human-like personifications. Whatever the case, I have read no explanation of why Jani’s mind has always been so extremely occupied with items that belong in learned linear sequences, while a number of different types of synesthesia (spatial, OLP, colours) do involve items that belong in learned linear sequences, such as days of the week, numbers, degrees, months of the year etc. Reported experiences of synesthesia could easily be mistaken as hallucination or delusion or psychosis by non-synesthetes who do not know what synesthesia is. Synesthesia appears to be the most comprehensive explanation for Jani’s “hallucinations”.

In December 2009 the Los Angeles Times reported that Jani still experiences her “hallucinations” frequently, even though she has been medicated with some of the most powerful anti-schizophrenia drugs and a bipolar drug as well.

Dr Norman Swan AM b. Norman Swirsky 1953 is a Scottish-born Australian Jewish doctor, evidence-based medicine advocate, journalist and broadcaster Dr Swan is famous in Australia for his decades hosting various radio shows and podcasts about medical news and appearances on television, all on the ABC, Australia’s national govt-owned public broadcaster. Dr Swan was awarded as a Member the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2023 Australia Day Honours. One odd behaviour of Dr Swan is that all of his broadcasts seem to include the word "necessarily", and it is weirdly mispronounced. Does he get some strange satisfaction from this? It annoys me every time.

Excerpt from an episode of the ABC radio series Health Report on Sat 27 Jan 2024 about various subjects including synaesthesia:

Norman Swan: That synaesthesia, later. Tegan, you probably don't know, but I actually do have a form of synaesthesia.

Tegan Taylor: Oh, we should have done the story about you. What's your form?

Norman Swan: Mine is much less dramatic. So you can get all sorts of things with synaesthesia. So mine is that when I think of numbers, I think of them in shapes. So it's very hard to describe. So, for example, if I think of ages, I think of kind of nought to ten, going up towards the right, and then it takes a left-hand turn, and then it goes up to 20, and then you go on into the reaches of ageing. If I think about dates and I think of the 20th century, I think of the first 20 years of the 20th century going in one direction and then another. And so I think of numbers as shapes.

Tegan Taylor: That is so interesting. Are you good at numbers in general?

Norman Swan: I'm crap at maths, but quite good at remembering phone numbers. I don't know whether that's got anything to do with it.

Sabriye Tenberken b. 1970, German social worker and co-founder of the organization Braille Without Borders. Tenberken became completely blind by the age of 13. Tenberken has been given an impressive collection of honours and awards.

Nikola Tesla 1856-1943, Serbian-American inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer and physicist, regarded as America’s greatest electrical engineer, alternating current electric power systems are the result of Tesla’s ideas and Tesla also filed the first basic radio patent. It should be noted though, that one Tesla biographer, Christopher Cooper, has explored Tesla's possible collaboration with research teams. Regardless, Tesla was a true genius whose place in history is unique and will never be equalled. Also a true eccentric regarded as a hero by other eccentrics. One biography asserted that Tesla was a superior being from the planet Venus (Pickover 1998).

Tesla described his synaesthesia and other unusual psychological experiences in the beginning of his book My Inventions. On page 17 he wrote “When I drop little squares of paper in a dish filled with liquid, I always sense a peculiar and awful taste in my mouth.” (Tesla 1977 translation). Strange as this may sound, synaesthesia triggers can be this odd and specific. Other most unusual involuntary sensory experiences described in this book may also have been visual synaesthesia of the projector type, and Tesla claimed that his brother had similar experiences. Scientists have confirmed that synaesthesia is a gene-based condition that often runs in families. Tesla was certainly not the only brilliant or eccentric person in his family.

Tesla had a “nervous breakdown” in his early twenties. By his account this consisted of extreme sensory hypersensitivity, heart problems and bodily twitches and tremors in response to nervous strain. Tesla had an eidetic memory, sensory aversions and hypersensitivity, was a highly visual thinker and could speak in eight languages. He was reportedly celibate and never married but had friends. Biographers have speculated whether Tesla was gay, asexual or simply strange. Photographs of the hotel where Tesla lived at the end of his life, preserved as a historical tribute, show two beds, side by side. Tesla reportedly died alone in a hotel in a state of indebtedness after losing scientific credibility because of his odd personality, eccentric ideas and symptoms suggestive of OCD that developed in his late 50s. He was born left-handed but became ambidextrous. L-H, H? A.

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951, Austrian philosopher and academic, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Wittgenstein studied engineering then mathematics then philosophy, later becoming a professor of philosophy at Cambridge. 

Wittgenstein was very late in his speech development, not speaking well until after his 4th birthday (Gillberg 2002). Wittgenstein was educated at home until the age of 14, and he built a working sewing machine at the age of 10. He was a strange, shy boy who stuttered and was bullied at school. Wittgenstein and the eccentric synesthete American writer Opal Whiteley (famous as a child genius) were both profiled as "schizoid" or Asperger children in the book Loners: the life path of unusual children by Dr Sula Wolff. He is described as having inherited dyslexia and “well read” by Ioan James, described as a bad speller by Gillberg. According to the Wikipedia Wittgenstein had perfect pitch, citing a book as the source of this information. 

Wittgenstein was predominantly homosexual, and one of the three of his siblings who committed suicide was most likely also a male homosexual. A translated note from one of Wittgenstein’s published works indicates that he either had grapheme-colour synaesthesia or knew of the condition; “It’s just like the way some people do not understand the question “What color has the vowel A for you?””(Ward 2008 p. 11). P-P, H, A.

Famous Synesthetes in Acting, Cinema or Theatre or Comedy

Alan Davies b. 1966, English actor, writer and comedian, plays Jonathan Creek in the TV series Jonathan Creek. On an episode of the BBC quiz game QI Davies and actor Stephen

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