The first documented case of autism is widely recognized as Donald Triplett, who was born in 1933 and diagnosed by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner in 1943. Triplett is often called "Case 1" because his case was the first detailed in Kanner's landmark paper, "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact," which described 11 children with similar behaviors that marked autism as a distinct condition. Donald Triplett exhibited early signs of atypical social behavior, repetitive behaviors, and language difficulties, leading to this historic diagnosis. His case initiated decades of research and awareness about autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Autism as a concept was mentioned earlier by psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to describe certain symptoms in schizophrenia, but it was not recognized as a separate condition until Kanner’s work in the 1940s.
