Leo Kanner

Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kanner practiced as a physician in Germany and South Dakota. In 1943, Kanner published his landmark paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing 11 children who displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He named their condition "early infantile autism". Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States and later served as the Chief of Child Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is one of the co-founders of The Children's Guild, a nonprofit organization serving children, families and child-serving organizations throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., and dedicated to "Transforming how America Cares for and Educates its Children and Youth." He is widely considered one of the most influential American psychiatrists of the 20th century.

13 June 1894

Born on the same birth date (13 June 1894): Jacques Henri Lartigue

Born on the same birth day (13 June): Antje Möldner-Schmidt • Bruce Flowers • Christo and Jeanne-Claude • Mary Whitehouse • Riikka Purra • Svetlana Krivelyova • Ulla Schmidt • Yiannis Boutaris

Born in the same month (June 1894): Alexander de Seversky • Alfred Kinsey • Bernard Ashmole • Chief Justice of New Zealand • Edward VIII • Harry Schmidt (mathematician) • Hermann Oberth • Jacques Henri Lartigue • José Carlos Mariátegui • Lloyd Hall • Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg • Milward Kennedy • Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet • W. W. E. Ross