Dr. Temple Grandin did not talk until she was three and a half years old. She was fortunate to get early speech therapy, and her teachers taught her how to wait and take turns when playing board games. She was mainstreamed into a normal kindergarten at age five. Oliver Sacks wrote in the foreword of Thinking in Pictures that her first book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, was "unprecedented because there had never before been an inside narrative of autism." Dr. Sacks profiled Dr. Grandin in his bestselling book Anthropologist on Mars.

Dr. Grandin became a prominent author and speaker on both autism and animal behavior. Today she is a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and has a successful career consulting on livestock handling equipment design and animal welfare. She has been featured on NPR and a BBC Special — "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow" — and has appeared on Larry King Live, 20/20, Sixty Minutes, and Fox and Friends. She delivered a 2010 TED Talk that has been viewed millions of times. Articles about Dr. Grandin have appeared in Time Magazine, the New York Times, Discover Magazine, Forbes, and USA Today.

When she was young, she was considered weird and teased and bullied in high school. The only place she had friends was in activities with a shared interest — horses, electronics, or model rockets. Mr. Carlock, her science teacher, was an important mentor who encouraged her interest in science. When she had a new goal of becoming a scientist, she had a reason for studying. Today, half the cattle in the United States are handled in facilities she has designed.

HBO made an Emmy Award winning movie about her life, and she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. Rotten Tomatoes described the film as "a heartfelt glimpse into Temple Grandin's mind" — a story of a woman who triumphed over prejudice to become an innovator in animal care and a lifelong advocate for humane practices. Dr. Grandin is a Colorado resident.