Isabelle RapinALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINEIsabelle Rapin, a child neurologist who spent her long career advancing the science behind autism spectrum disorder, died of pneumonia last month at age 89 (May 24).
“Calling her one of the founding mothers of autism is very appropriate,” Thomas Frazier II, a clinical psychologist and chief science officer of Autism Speaks, an advocacy group for people with autism and their families, tells The New York Times. “With the gravity she carried, she moved us into a modern understanding of autism.”
Rapin was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and attended medical school at the University of Lausanne. She moved to Manhattan in 1953, where she worked at both Bellevue Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital before taking a position at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.
During her long career, Rapin focused on communication disorders in children and made a number of significant contributions to the field of autism research, such as advancing ...
