Hans Asperger (February 18, 1906 – October 21, 1980) was an Austrian pediatrician, medical theorist, and professor of medicine. He was the discoverer of the so-called Asperger syndrome, but the significance of this discovery was only widely recognized after his death. That is what Wikipedia says. I believe it is mistaken. The discovery bore fruit much earlier, as documented by a recent article that I offer here to Czech readers. (By the time I put this together, Wikipedia had already enriched its text.)
Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician who initiated research on autism in children and after whom one of the syndromes is named, actively cooperated with the Nazi program in which sick children were killed. So his research bore fruit immediately. This news was published by historian Herwig Czech this year on April 18 in the journal Molecular Autism. Asperger reported severely disabled children to the Vienna clinic Am Spiegelgrund, where 789 child patients were killed by gas or lethal injection as part of the child euthanasia program T4.
The author reviewed archival documents including Asperger's personal files and medical records. Asperger was not a member of the Nazi party, but he was involved in its affiliated organizations and groups publicly supporting the "policy of racial hygiene" including forced sterilization. For his loyalty, he was rewarded with career advancement.
After the annexation of Austria, the Vienna Medical Faculty was "cleansed," but Asperger's work was not affected in any way. He first described "autistic psychopathy" in 1938, and the mild form of this disorder characterized by considerable adaptability was later named after him. Asperger demonstrated his loyalty to the Nazi regime through public lectures, ending his works with the greeting "Heil Hitler."
As for the T4 program, he was a member of a commission that examined children in facilities for the mentally disabled, and at least 35 of them, labeled as "uneducable," were sent to Spiegelgrund, where they were killed. Asperger himself recommended two additional little girls, aged two and five, to this facility. (Source: https://bit.ly/2Hd8J06)
The first head of this institution, Erwin Jekelius, was sentenced to 25 years and died in a Soviet camp; his successor, who took over in 1942, Hans Bertha, was never even tried and died in 1964 after a successful career in Graz; the chief physician Ernst Illing was publicly hanged in 1946; and Hans Asperger died peacefully in Vienna in 1980.
MUDr. Radkin Honzák psychiatrist Author's blog: http://blog.aktualne.cz/blogy/radkin-honzak.php