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Abstract
Dear Sir, More than 20 years have passed since the release of the English translation of the original paper by Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva (Kiev, 1891-Moscow, 1981) entitled "Die schizoiden Psychopathien im Kindesalter,"[1] but the international literature on autism has not yet given the right acknowledgment to this child psychiatrist who remains still unknown to many authors. According to the official history of autism, the first descriptions of individuals, who today we would diagnose as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD), respectively, date from the work of Leo Kanner and of Hans Asperger. [4] However, already in 1926, Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva (surname sometimes transliterated as "Ssucharewa" from Cyrillic), who was then active in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had described six boys presenting with a clinical picture that, as for the clinical features and evolution, is fully compatible, according to the modern criteria, with ASD and that today we would call "high functioning."