Thomas West holds BA in English Literature and MA in International Relations. He is a writer based in Washington, DC and has been a manager and consultant in the field of computer systems, energy research, and international technology transfer for a number of years.

His publications include In the Mind's Eye (1991, Prometheus Books; Japanese translation published by Kodansha Scientific has been released April 1994) which concerns the connection between dyslexia, visual thinking, computer graphics, creativity, genius and education. He also examines the role of visual-spacial strengths and verbal weaknesses in the lives of ten historical persons, including Albert Einstein and William Butler Yeats. Visual thinking is considered a form of intelligence, but one that often develops at the expense of verbal or literary skills, contends West. As scientific visualisation techniques become more widely used, there's a need to focus on differing visual-spatial abilities among users. In doing so, the 500-year domination of our education by the teaching of the skills of a mediaeval clerk - reading, writing, counting, and memorising texts - will end, and a new set of visually-based talents take their place.

West is currently providing presentations, articles and consulting services related to the book and associated topics. This work has included lectures and workshops at conferences in the US and overseas on the future educational and employment implications of recent developments in scientific visualisation techniques, neurological research and computer graphics technologies.

Among his most recent projects you'll find Return to Visual Thinking (translated in German for the May 1994 publication of the Max Planck Gesellschaft) and a paper entitled Visual Thinkers in an Age of Computer Visualisation which was published in the August 1993 Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH.

Thomas West can be reached at:
fax: 301 654 0987 Washington
e-mail: 4139461@mcimail.com