Susan R. Barry

(Author photo by Rosalie Winard) Susan R. Barry is a neurobiologist who has spoken worldwide on the topics of neuroplasticity and binocular vision. She earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and Ph.D. in biology from Princeton University. From 1992 until her retirement in 2016, she was a professor of biology and neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College. The Princeton Review lists Barry among the 300 outstanding college teachers in the U.S. For years, Sue taught her neurobiology students the conventional scientific wisdom that stereovision could develop only during a critical period in early childhood. She even used her own vision history to support this dogma since she had been cross-eyed since early infancy and was stereoblind. However, at age 48, she consulted a developmental optometrist who prescribed a program of optometric vision therapy. To her utter astonishment, her vision improved dramatically, and she experienced her first 3D views. Dubbed “Stereo Sue” by Oliver Sacks in a 2006 New Yorker article by that name, Dr. Barry went on to write Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions which was rated the 4th best science book for 2009 by the editors of Amazon and has been translated into 8 languages. Barry’s second book, Coming to Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, A Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World, was published in June, 2021 and her third book, Dear Oliver: An Unexpected Friendship with Oliver Sacks, in January, 2024.