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Steve Silberman, a science writer who changed the international conversation about autism in 2015 with his groundbreaking book “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity,” died unexpectedly Aug. 29 at his home in San Francisco. He was 66.

A person of wide-ranging interests, Silberman was also the co-author of “Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads” with David Shenk in 1994. After first seeing the Grateful Dead in 1973, Silberman became a lifelong fan and developed considerable expertise on the band, writing liner notes for several of its albums.

Rest in peace to astonishing author, activist, and cherished member of the Grateful Dead family, Steve Silberman.

“When I started working for the Grateful Dead in 1999, Steve Silberman was around a lot, working on the So Many Roads boxed set throughout the summer. He was so… pic.twitter.com/BIih4EAtoQ

— Grateful Dead (@GratefulDead) August 29, 2024

In Cole Valley, Silberman’s home since the 1980s, his many friends routinely greeted him as he walked through the neighborhood. Keith Karraker, his husband of 16 years, said it was impossible to get anywhere quickly in Cole Valley because Silberman would stop to talk with everyone.

Rabbi Nosson Potash of Chabad of Cole Valley was among those neighborhood friends. 

“I appreciated how welcoming Steve was to my wife and I when we moved here in 2011,” Potash told J. “Steve was the founder of the Cole Valley Facebook, and he did an amazing job letting people know about us, even taking pictures at our first menorah lighting.”

Potash recalled visiting Silberman’s mother, Leslie Silberman, when she became ill. “I’d bring her a challah or sing a Jewish song, and she and I connected over Jewish culture and tradition in ways she had not done all her life,” the rabbi said. “I did that partly because of our Community for Jewish Seniors program, but also because my every interaction with Steve was incredible. He was decisive, incisive and insightful — a real mensch.”

Silberman, a longtime Buddhist, was Jewish by birth. He spoke with J. in 2016 about his life’s work and his Jewish background. 

His parents were communists who were “rebelling against their parents’ suburban observances, which amounted to ‘do what you want, but show up in shul,’” he said at the time. “I’m not very observant, but I am committed to the traditional Jewish attempt to heal the world.” 

He also noted that listening to the Haggadah being read aloud at Passover as a child helped him understand the power of language and to pay attention to rhythm in his writing.

When I die, please don’t say that I’ve crossed over into the spirit realm, gone to the Other Side, moved on to a better place, rejoined my ancestors, or any other of those comforting fables. Just selfishly or selflessly use my own impermanence to WAKE UP to your own.

A 2023 Facebook post by Steve Silberman

Silberman’s best-selling “NeuroTribes” grew out of “The Geek Syndrome,” an in-depth article he wrote in 2001 for Wired magazine. “NeuroTribes” ended up on the New York Times’ 100 notable books list for 2015 and won Britain’s Samuel Johnson (now the Baillie Gifford) Prize for Nonfiction. “NeuroTribes” has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and Silberman’s 2015 TED Talk on the topic has been viewed nearly 2 million times.

The book promoted self-advocacy, “in which people with autism are empowered to shape decisions that affect them,” according to the Washington Post.

Silberman, who was not autistic, spent eight years researching and writing “NeuroTribes,” with encouragement from autistic individuals, their families, their teachers and his neurologist friend Oliver Sacks. A parent of one autistic child told the New York Times last week that Silberman “popularized the idea that autistic people aren’t broken and are part of the tapestry of humanity.” 

Born Dec. 23, 1957, in Ithaca, N.Y., Silberman grew up on the East Coast. After hearing poet Allen Ginsberg at Queens College in 1977, Silberman worked as his apprentice at the then-Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and later served as Ginsberg’s teaching assistant.

After getting a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Oberlin College in 1979, Silberman earned a master’s degree in English literature from UC Berkeley. For a time, he waited tables in San Francisco, wrote restaurant reviews and penned articles on music. Later, he wrote for numerous local and national publications.

In recent years, Silberman could always be counted on for lively posts on social media, something his followers relished. Last year he wrote on Facebook: “When I die, please don’t say that I’ve crossed over into the spirit realm, gone to the Other Side, moved on to a better place, rejoined my ancestors, or any other of those comforting fables. Just selfishly or selflessly use my own impermanence to WAKE UP to your own.”

Silberman is survived by his husband and his sister, Hilary Shawaf, both of San Francisco, and by his nephew, Christopher Shawaf, of the Cotswolds region in England.