Donald Gray Triplett, first person diagnosed with autism, dead at 89

Donald Triplett, a Mississippi man who became known as the the first person to ever be diagnosed with autism, has died. He was 89 years old.

Triplett’s death on Thursday was confirmed in an obituary posted on Ott & Lee Funeral Home’s website in Forest, Mississippi, where Triplett lived. The obituary noted that Triplett died at his home after an extended illness.

Throughout his life, Triplett was featured in news articles, books, a PBS documentary and medical journals after he gained recognition as being the first person diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

The eldest son of an affluent Mississippi family, Triplett at an early age displayed challenges with social interactions and an uncanny knack for memorization, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which has an entry on him. Unsure of what to do, Triplett’s parents committed him to a state institution in 1937 before withdrawing him a year later, the entry states.

In 1938, Triplett was examined by Austrian child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who was initially baffled by the boy’s symptoms, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Determined to find a diagnosis, Kanner saw Triplett several more times and by 1943 had seen 10 children with similar symptoms to Triplett. In his article “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” published that year, Kanner referred to Triplett as Case 1 while outlining the basic symptoms of what later became known as autism, the encyclopedia’s entry states.