'Isabelle Rapin, a Swiss-born child neurologist who helped establish autism?s biological underpinnings and advanced the idea that autism was part of a broad spectrum of disorders, died on May 24 in Rhinebeck, N.Y. She was 89.



?Calling her one of the founding mothers of autism is very appropriate,? said Dr. Thomas Frazier II, a clinical psychologist and chief science officer of Autism Speaks, an advocacy group for people with autism and their families. ?With the gravity she carried, she moved us into a modern understanding of autism.?

Dr. Rapin (pronounced RAP-in) taught at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and over a half-century there built a reputation for rigorous scholarship. She retired in 2012 but continued working at her office and writing journal papers. The neurologist Oliver Sacks, a close friend and colleague, called her his ?scientific conscience.? In his autobiography, ?On the Move: A Life? (2015), Dr. Sacks wrote: ?Isabelle would never permit me, any more than she permitted herself, any loose, exaggerated, uncorroborated statements. ?Give me the evidence,? she always says.?

Dr. Rapin?s focus on autism evolved from her studies of communications and metabolic disorders that cause mental disabilities and diminish children?s ability to navigate the world. For decades she treated deaf children, whose difficulties in communicating limited their path to excelling in school and forced some into institutions. ?Communications disorders were the overarching theme of my mother?s career,? Dr. Oaklander said in an interview. . .

Dr. Rapin recalled a critical moment in her work on autism. ?After evaluating hundreds of autistic children,? she wrote, ?I became convinced that the report by one-third of parents of autistic preschoolers, of a very early language and behavioral regression, is real and deserving of biologic investigation.?'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/s...n-autism.html?