Gifted and Talented: Bucky Fuller

Excerpted from the current popular neuroscience book I'm reading, A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain, by the great John J. Ratey, M. D.

"The development of personality itself is firmly rooted in the sensory apparatus. Even people with extraordinary perceptual abilities often exist in a love/hate relationship with their gifts, because it can be alienating to "see" the world differently than most people. Yet that different view is the defining characteristic of any great artist - indeed, the characteristic that makes each of us unique. The great American architect Buckminster Fuller, perhaps best known for his creation of the geodesic dome, often felt tremendously overloaded by visual stimulation. He would routinely wear glasses that allowed only part of the visual spectrum to enter his eyes, and when he put them on he found it easier to think. When out on a building site or out for a stroll in the city, he would wear earplugs because the noise left him unable to deal with the world.

Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (1895-1983) was an American systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.
Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.