Famous Persons With ADD

This list has been accumulated from various sources. The biggest contributor to this list is the About.com ADD library, that Eileen Bailey facilitates. No two lists are alike, among lists of Famous ADD-ers.

Check back later, because I desire to write more about this. If you are ADD, you are in good company.

Hans Christian Andersen
Johann Sebastian Bach
Ann Bancroft
Ludwig von Beethoven
Harry Belafonte
Alexander Graham Bell
John Wilkes Booth
Junius Brutus Booth (John Wilkes's father)
Gregory Boyington
Johannes Brahms
Marlon Brando
George Burns
Sir Richard Francis Burton
Admiral Richard Byrd
Thomas Carlyle
Andrew Carnegie
Lewis Carroll
Prince Charles
Agatha Christie
Winston Churchill
John Corcoran
Bill Cosby
Harvey Cushing, M.D.
Leonardo da Vinci
Salvador Dali
Walt Disney
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Michael Faraday
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Malcolm Forbes
Henry Ford
Stephen Collins Foster
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Frost
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Galileo
Bill Gates (surrounded by Non-ADD executives)
Danny Glover
Tracey Gold
Edward Hallowell, M.D.
Lorenz Hart (a contrast with Oscar Hammerstein)
Stephen Hawkins
Steven Hawkins
William Randolph Hearst
Mariel Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Alfred Hitchcock
Samuel Johnson
Micheal Jordan
Kate Kelly
John F. Kennedy
Robert Kennedy
Jason Kidd
John Lennon
Carl Lewis
Abraham Lincoln
Mary Todd Lincoln (Abe's wife)
Martin Luther
Groucho Marx
James Clark Maxwell
Steve McQueen
Howard Morris
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
David H. Murdock
Napoleon
Nasser
Issac Newton
Nostradamus
Phillip William Otterbein
General George Patton
Louis Pasteur
Simon Peter (the disciple)
Kitty Petty
Roger Tory Peterson
Picasso
Edgar Allan Poe
Cole Porter
Giacomo Puccini
Puccini Rodin
Dan Quayle
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Peggy Ramundo
John J. Ratey, M.D.
Ronald Reagan
Eddie Rickenbacker
Joan Rivers
John D. Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Eleanor Roosevelt
Pete Rose
Babe Ruth
Nolan Ryan
Anwar Sadat
Pierre Salinger
Charles Schulz
Charles Schwab
Franz Schubert (Composer of "Ave Maria")
George C. Scott
William Shakespeare
George Bernard Shaw
Tom Smothers
Socrates
Steven Spielberg
Sylvester Stallone
Jackie Stewart
James Stewart
Peter Tchaikovsky
Henry David Thoreau
Thomas Thoreau
Leo Tolstoy
Alberto Tomba
Lana Turner
Mark Twain
Vincent Van Gogh
Russell Varian
Jules Verne
Werner Von Braun
Maria Von Trapp
Lindsay Wagner
Charles Wesley
John Wesley (perhaps opposite of ADD)
General Westmoreland
Weyerhauser family
Russell White
Walt Whitman
Robin Williams
Stevie Wonder
F. W. Woolworth
Frank Lloyd Wright
Wilbur & Orville Wright
William Butler Yeats

During their time, most people thought any idea of man flying was wrong. But Wilbur and Orville proved that they were Wright. Wilbur and Orville first had to develop a completely new science that today is called aerodynamics -- and they built the first wind tunnel.

Bob Seay has a different list of famous ADD'ers. Bob's list includes some of the same ones on my list, plus some others. Bob includes the George Bush children; however I don't desire to appear to have political motivations for including our president (though I have seen something about that before). Bob's list is within a writing about how ADD'ers are different from other people. Click here for Bob's list.

Click here for Kitty Petty's (of Kitty Petty ADD/LD Institute) comprehensive list of famous ADD'ers. Elvis Presley is on Kitty's list, as is John Lennon (the Beatle). Also President George W. Bush is on Kitty's list. Woodrow Wilson is another Democratic president on Kitty's list, as is John F. Kennedy. Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf too is on that list. She lists two consecutive CBS news anchors, Walter Cronkhite and Dan Rather. Kitty indicates which ones were ADHD and which ones were dyslexic.

Among the politicians listed, there are both Democrats and Republicans. Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy are political opposites.

Again, I say that no two lists are alike.

Prince Charles has had royal expectations that are unfriendly to ADD. At age 5, he showed evidences of confusion, and that nearly coincided with his mother being crowned the queen. His parents were away for long periods to perform royal obligations, while he was raised by nannies. His father, Prince Phillip, sent him to military academies (again royal expectation) and that was a straightjacket to an ADD'er. The situation most news media mentioned was that he was married to Diana, while he was in love with Camilla. News media published photos of Diana and Charles looking in opposite directions. Although Diana battled depression, she was more focused than Charles.

Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a thunderstorm to experiment with electricity. He was a risk taker, inventive, and unique viewer. Miraculously, Ben wasn't killed. That was before homes had electricity.

Roger Tory Peterson had agreed to give a speech to a naturalists' gathering, in New York City. He took a commuter train from his Connecticut suburb, and then he was unable to recall the purpose of his trek into New York City. He never arrived at the naturalists' gathering.

Winston Churchill once said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

Frank Manheim has written an analytical article, Famous People With Attention Deficit Disorder, Probing The Realities And Myths.

<>< Your ADD brother in the risen Christ,
Lester Hemphill
Founder of ADDoration Ministries