Colleagues will be saddened to hear about the death of Lorna Wing on Friday 6th June. Lorna began her work in autism in the 1960s. As a parent of a child who had autism she helped to found the National Autistic Society in 1962, and dedicated her life to advancing understanding of this condition and helping families. Her ground breaking early epidemiological work in the 1970s with Judith Gould led to the identification of autism as a ‘triad’ of impairments. Lorna introduced the concept of a ‘spectrum’ of autism to the field in the 1980s, emphasizing an approach to autism of a broad dimensional condition affecting all ages and abilities and found alongside other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. In the 1981 she wrote the first paper on Asperger’s work and
introduced the term Asperger’s Syndrome. For her, autism was firstly a developmental disorder that could only be understood in the context of a child or adult’s social and cognitive developmental history. She was an extraordinary inspiration and support for families, individuals with autism, clinicians and researchers alike and a wonderful and generous mentor and friend.
Full obituary: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10886838/Lorna-Wing-obituary.html
