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. 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 Asperger's Syndrome became widely recognized. The first person to use the term "Asperger's Syndrome" in a paper was Lorna Wing. Her paper [1] was published in 1981. Partly because his work was mostly in German and little-translated, Asperger's work was not internationally recognized until the 1990s.
