Joy Adamson (January 20, 1910 - January 3, 1980) was a naturalist, artist and author born in former Austria-Hungary. Joy is famous in particular for her best-selling book Born Free (published in 1960) about raising Elsa the Lioness. Elsa's mother was killed by George (Joy's husband) who thought she was going to attack him. However, the lioness was just protecting her cubs, so George took them home after realizing his mistake and Elsa (the youngest one) then stayed with them until adulthood. They taught her themselves how to survive in the wild, and Elsa also became the first lioness successfully released back into the wild. Joy was also an artist who created more than 500 paintings and line drawings. A compilation of her artwork was published as an autobiography called The Searching Spirit. Joy was murdered in Kenya on January 3, 1980. She is mentioned as most likely having Asperger's Syndrome in the book Asperger’s Syndrome: A Gift or a Curse? by Michael Fitzgerald and Viktoria Lyons, partly based on the details about her life in Elspeth Huxley's foreword to Joy's autobiography. Joy is also included on this list of Great Women of Our Time. Read more about this amazing lady and her extraordinary life on her Wikipedia page.