In fact I’ve seen Lorna Wing, the woman who coined the phrase Asperger’s Syndrome, a few times on TV but was unaware of her contribution to the lexicon of the autism community.

Not just that she was also a co-founder of the National Autistic Society (NAS) here in the UK in 1962.

Indeed so important was she that her death a couple of days ago made the new headlines.

Like so many of us in the ASD community it was having a child diagnosed with autism which sparked her interest the subject. I knew nothing about ASD until our son John was diagnosed in 2009.

Not just was Lorna a physician and a psychiatrist she was also a pioneering researcher in the field of autism. While her own daughter could be described has having “classic autism” she took up Has Asperger’s research into autistic children who do not have typical speech disorders as part of their ASD. So giving the now commonly used term Asperger’s Syndrome. She also saw that autism was a spectrum rather than a fixed set of diagnostic criteria.

The aim of this blog post is to collect in one spot a few of the obituaries and tributes to Dr Lorna Wing. For me, at least, she represents the tenacity that it see in so many parents of children with autism.

If you have written a tribute or know of a an obituary please feel free to put a link in the comments box below.

To start the process I’d like to share the UK’s Daily Telegraph obituary which will give you a great overview of Dr Wing’s life and the importance of her work. You can read NAS’s tribute here.

Thanks very much in advance. And thanks Dr Wing!