15 Facts About Sally Shaywitz

Sally Shaywitz was born on 1942 and is an American physician-scientist who is the Audrey G Ratner Professor in Learning Development at Yale University.

Sally Shaywitz's research provides the framework for modern understanding of dyslexia.

Sally Shaywitz is the daughter of two Eastern European immigrants.

Sally Shaywitz's father was a dressmaker and her mother a homemaker.

Sally Shaywitz earned her undergraduate degree at City College of New York, and originally considered a career in law.

Sally Shaywitz was accepted early to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

That year her mother was diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and died just before Shaywitz started her medical studies.

When Sally Shaywitz joined medical school, she was one of four women in a class of one hundred students.

Alongside completing her training, Sally Shaywitz had three children, whom she raised in Westport, Connecticut.

Sally Shaywitz started her medical career seeing patients out of her home in suburban Connecticut.

Sally Shaywitz was eventually recruited by Yale University to look after patients with learning disorders, including dyslexia.

Sally Shaywitz showed that boys and girls were equally as likely to be affected by dyslexia.

Sally Shaywitz developed the "Sea of Strengths" model, which explains that dyslexia is a deficit in language processing.

Sally Shaywitz's research identified that there is no connection between dyslexia and intelligence so that you can be very smart and still read very slowly.

In 2003 Sally Shaywitz published Overcoming Dyslexia, a book which helps people identify, understand and overcome challenges in reading.