Uta Frith

Uta Frith was born and educated in Germany. She trained in clinical psychology at the University of London's Institute of Psychiatry and completed her Ph.D. on autism in 1968. She counts herself fortunate to have been able to work as an independent research scientist for all of her career, supported by the Medical Research Council, UK. Her main research interest have been the neuro-developmental disorders, in particular the cognitive causes underlying core symptoms of autism and dyslexia. Uta Frith is now Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Visiting Professor at the University of Aarhus. She has received honorary degrees from a number of Universities (Gothenburg, St Andrews, Palermo, Nottingham, York and Cambridge). She is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society. She is also a member of the Leopoldina, Germany’s National Academy of Science and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. She was recently appointed an Honorary DBE.



Uta Frith has pioneered an approach that combines psychological, clinical and neuroimaging methods to study developmental disorders with a basis in the brain. She was one of the first to recognise the importance of Asperger syndrome, and edited a book on Autism and Asperger Syndrome in 1991. When Uta Frith started her career, autism had hardly been heard of, and the idea that this disorder could be studied experimentally was audacious. Since then autism has become one of the most widely studied developmental disorders. Uta Frith has contributed to this leap in knowledge by her research on Theory of Mind and Central Coherence. This work has led to a better understanding of the core features of autistic disorders. Uta Frith has also contributed to new insights into the nature of dyslexia, its universal basis in the brain and its different manifestation in different languages. She considers irregular English spelling as a magnifying glass for the study of dyslexia, while the transparent spelling of Italian can hide dyslexia but can be revealed by specially designed tests. Uta Frith’s scientific publications number over 200. Her best known book is Autism: explaining the enigma (1989, second edition 2003). She has also written on Autism in History and on Autism and Talent, and she is the author of Autism: A Very Short Introduction (2008).



Uta Frith’s home page https://sites.google.com/site/utafrith/Home gives more details about her research on autism and dyslexia. It also reports on her other interests, namely supporting women in science, and discussing the application of insights from neuroscience to education. She currently pursues all these passions on Twitter where you can follow her: @utafrith