Hans Asperger: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Hans Asperger (1906-1980) was the Austrian pediatrician after whom Asperger's Syndrome is named.

Born in Vienna, Asperger published the first definition of Asperger's Syndrome in 1944. He identified a pattern of behavior and abilities that he saw mostly in boys as "autistic psychopathy," a personality disorder. 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 a subject with such detail.

Asperger died before his identification of this pattern of behaviour became widely recognized because his work was mostly in German and little-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 challenged the previously accepted model of autism presented by Leo Kanner in 1943.

Further reading

• Uta Frith (ed.): Autism and Asperger Syndrome (Cambridge University Press, 1991; ISBN 052138608X) — in which Asperger's 1944 paper is translated and annotated

• Asperger, H. (1944), Die 'Autistischen Psychopathen' im Kindesalter, Archiv fur 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.