The character arc of Jill Bolte Taylor
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 4 May 1959. Between then and now sit the study of severe mental illness taken up because of her brother, a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School mapping how brain cells communicate, a massive stroke on the morning of 10 December 1996, major brain surgery three weeks later to remove a clot the size of a golf ball, an eight year recovery, a book in 2008, the first talk of its kind to go viral, a place on a list of the hundred most influential people in the world, and a second book in 2021. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Jill Bolte Taylor?
She watched her own brain fail, and took notes.
She went into the study of severe mental illness because of her brother, who has psychosis, which is the most ordinary reason anybody chooses a hard field: somebody they love is inside the problem. By the early 1990s she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, working on mapping the brain to determine how cells communicate with each other.
On the morning of 10 December 1996 she woke up and discovered she was having a stroke. She was thirty seven, and she was one of the very few people on earth equipped to understand, as it happened, exactly which functions were going and in what order. The cause was bleeding from an abnormal congenital connection between an artery and a vein in the left hemisphere of her brain.
Three weeks later, on 27 December 1996, she had major brain surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital to remove a clot the size of a golf ball that was pressing on her brain. The recovery took eight years. Not eight months. Eight years, to get back the language, the reading, the walking and the person.
What she did with it is the reason anybody outside neuroscience knows her name. She wrote My Stroke of Insight in 2008, an account of the whole thing from inside the failing brain, and she gave a talk that became the first of its kind to go viral on the internet, after which the book became a New York Times bestseller. In May 2008 she was named one of the hundred most influential people in the world, and the book won a science book award the following year.
She founded a nonprofit, lectures in anatomy, cell biology and physiology at a medical school, and is national spokesperson for a brain tissue bank, which is the least glamorous and most useful job in her field. A second book followed in 2021.
The moments
Jill Bolte Taylor's timeline.
The 1980s
Because of her brother
Milestone, and it changed everything. She picked the field because somebody she loved was inside the problem.
The 1990s
Mapping the brain at Harvard
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A Harvard fellowship, working out how brain cells talk to each other.
She wakes up mid stroke
Setback, and it changed everything. She woke up, understood exactly what was happening, and could not stop it.
Brain surgery
Setback, and it changed everything. A clot the size of a golf ball, taken out of her head.
Eight years of recovery
Setback, and it changed everything. Eight years to get the language, the reading and the walking back.
The 2000s
She can work again
Milestone, and it changed everything. Back at the front of a lecture theatre, with the same brain.
Go back to the bench, or talk
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: tell the whole thing, taken, or back to the laboratory. The talk was the first of its kind to go viral and the book became a bestseller.
The first talk to go viral
Milestone, and it changed everything. The first talk of its kind that the whole internet watched.
A hundred most influential
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A neuroanatomist, on a list mostly made of heads of state.
My Stroke of Insight
Milestone, and it changed everything. The only account of a stroke written by somebody who could read the instruments.
The 2010s
A foundation, and a tissue bank
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Asking people, on the record, to leave their brains to science.
The 2020s
Whole Brain Living
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Twenty five years after the stroke, a second book.
She is still lecturing, and still asking people to donate their brains to the tissue bank when they are finished with them. What she set moving is the only first hand scientific account there is of a brain going down and coming back, written by the one person who could read the instruments while they failed.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
Hers had a morning that took eight years to get over. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Jill Bolte Taylor: frequently asked questions
What people ask about her line.
What is Jill Bolte Taylor's character arc?
What happened to Jill Bolte Taylor in 1996?
How long did Jill Bolte Taylor take to recover?
What is Jill Bolte Taylor's book about?
Did Jill Bolte Taylor give a famous talk?
What does Jill Bolte Taylor do now?
Where does this timeline of Jill Bolte Taylor's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with her.
Sources
- Jill Bolte Taylor, English Wikipedia biography, filed under living people.
- Massachusetts General Hospital records for the surgery of 27 December 1996, as summarised there.
- Time magazine's list of the hundred most influential people, May 2008.