Hans Asperger, who discovered Asperger syndrome, described his patients as "little professors".

Hans Asperger (b. February 18, 1906, d. October 21, 1980) was the Austrian pediatrician after whom Asperger syndrome is named.

Life

Born on a farm outside Vienna, Asperger displayed an early talent for languages. He was a member in the youth movements of the 1920s. He earned his medical doctorate in 1931, and found his first job a year later as a member of the university children's clinic. In 1934, his career developed with a move to the psychiatric hospital in Leipzig.

It is not certain what Asperger did during the early years of World War II. In the later years of the war he was a soldier in Croatia. In 1944, after the publication of his landmark paper describing autistic symptoms, he found a permanent tenured post at the University of Vienna. Shortly after the war ended, he became director of a children's clinic in the city. He later held posts at both Innsbruck and Vienna. Then, beginning in 1964, he headed the SOS-Kinderdorf in Hinterbrühl. During his life, he published over 350 medical papers.

Asperger's Syndrome

Asperger published the first definition of Asperger syndrome in 1944. In four boys, he identified a pattern of behavior and abilities that he called "autistic psychopathy", meaning autism (self) and psychopathy (personality disease). The pattern included "a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements." Asperger called children with AS "little professors" because of their ability to talk about their favorite subject in great detail. It is commonly said that the paper was based on only four boys. However, Dr. Günter Krämer, of Zürich, who knew Asperger, states that it "was based on investigations of more than 400 children".

Asperger was convinced that many of the children he identified as having autistic symptoms would use their special talents in adulthood. He followed one child, Fritz V., into adulthood. Fritz V. became a professor of astronomy and solved an error in Newton’s work he originally noticed as a child. Hans Asperger’s positive outlook contrasts strikingly with Leo Kanner's description of autism, of which Asperger's is often considered to be a high-functioning form.

Near the end of World War II, Asperger opened a school for children with autistic psychopathy, with Sister Victorine. The school was bombed towards the end of the war, Sister Victorine was killed, the school was destroyed and much of Hans Asperger's early work was lost. It was this event that arguably delayed the understanding of autistic spectrum conditions in the west.

Interestingly, as a child, Hans Asperger appears to have exhibited features of the very condition named after him. He was described as a remote and lonely child, who had difficulty making friends. He was talented in language; in particular he was interested in the Austrian poet Franz Grillparzer, whose poetry he would frequently quote to his uninterested classmates.

Asperger died before his identification of this pattern of behavior became widely recognized, because his work was mostly in German and barely translated. The first person to use the term "Asperger's Syndrome" in a paper was British researcher Lorna Wing. Her paper, Asperger's syndrome: a clinical account, was published in 1981 and it challenged the previously accepted model of autism presented by Leo Kanner in 1943. Unlike Kanner, Dr. Asperger's findings were ignored and disregarded in the English-speaking world in his lifetime. Finally, from the early 1990s, his findings began to gain notice, and nowadays Asperger's Syndrome is recognized as a condition worldwide.

International Asperger's Day, February 18, marks the anniversary of Dr. Asperger's birth. International Asperger's Day was conceived by Asperger Services Australia.

Further reading

• Uta Frith (ed.): Autism and Asperger Syndrome (translated and annotated version of Asperger's 1944 paper), Cambridge University Press, 1991; ISBN 0-521-38608-X

Papers

• Asperger, H. (1944), Die 'Autistischen Psychopathen' im Kindesalter, Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 117, pp.76-136.
• Asperger, H. (1968), Zur Differentialdiagnose des Kindlichen Autismus, Acta paedopsychiatrica, 35, pp.136-145.
• Asperger, H. (1979), Problems of Infantile Autism, Communication, 13, pp.45-52.

Reference

• "Asperger's syndrome: a clinical account" Lorna Wing, Psychological Medicine, vol 11, no 1, p 115-129 (February, 1981) reprinted with permission from Cambridege University Press

See also

• Asperger Syndrome
• List of Austrian scientists

External links

• Autistic type or autistic disorder ? , Definition
• UDel.edu - 'Online Asperger Syndrome Information & Support' (OASIS)
• Yahoo.com - 'International Asperger's Day - February 18' (listserv)