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The work of Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva preceded both Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger by nearly two decades.

She described intellectually capable but socially struggling boys in 1925 and girls in 1927.

The narrative of "nerds" and "anxious women" causing autism overdiagnosis crisis needs Sukhareva's erasure.

There is a narrative that autism diagnosis expanded dramatically in the early 21st century, including a population of people diagnosed in adolescence or later, articulate, intellectually capable, and often female.`1 As the story goes, those verbally fluent, socially anxious, and sensory sensitive people somehow “invaded” autism and are now creating an "overdiagnosis crisis."

The story only holds if you erase the history of autism, and especially if you erase the work of Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva, which preceded both Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger by nearly two decades. In 1925, Sukhareva clearly described older boys who were writing for a school newspaper in a great literary style, playing musical instruments, creating art, connecting deeply with nature and select individuals, and holding on to their ethical principles. They also had sensory sensitivities, limited motor coordination, intense idiosyncratic interests, and difficulties with socializing.

In 1927, she followed up with a description of a sample of girls who were in many ways similar to the boys, but with a generally subtler overall clinical presentation and less unusual interests. The girls also had higher levels of emotional dysregulation.

In 2021, Oxford professor David Sher and Cambridge professor Jenny Gibson credited Sukhareva’s work as “the first clinical account of autistic children.”

And according to that account, the “invaders,” the “diagnostic newcomers,” autistic people with fluent language and significant accomplishments in their fields of interest were there first. Before Asperger’s 1944 account of boys, which was very similar to those described by Sukhareva, and before Kanner described eight boys and three girls with “early infantile autism” in 1943.

But Sukhareva’s boys and girls were erased along with her name.

The Legacy of the Erasure

Sukhareva was a Soviet-era Jewish woman working in a field dominated by European and American men. Her original 1925 paper appeared in Russian, and the 1926 German translation (likely accessible to Asperger) mangled her name and further blunted her visibility in later citation canon. Archival work shows that Kanner was familiar with her publications and corresponded with her, but he never indicated that her work had influenced his.

Subsequent histories of autism were constructed largely from English‑language sources and developed a neat, male genealogy in which Leo Kanner was cast as the “father” of autism and Hans Asperger as his European counterpart, while Sukhareva’s earlier and strikingly modern work disappeared from the narrative.

Narratives might be constructed, but they influence real lives. Sukhareva’s erasure reverberates in decades of unnecessary suffering of millions of late-diagnosed autistic people. It’s in despair of a tween told to get it together and stop complaining about the noise nobody else can hear. It’s in the tears of a bullied teen girl who learns to ace tests and mimic eye contact, only to be told that she can’t be autistic because her grades are too good. It’s in the existentially exhausted adult who spends half a lifetime wondering what they are doing wrong and hating themselves, while clinicians insist they are “too articulate” or “too accomplished” to fit a diagnosis that was, in reality, built around people exactly like them.

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That erasure is in modern myths about autism and in epistemic injustice that denies autistic people a say in their own story. And that erasure is also in the pundits who complain that “sensitive nerds” and “anxious women” have somehow “hijacked autism.” Sukhareva’s 1925 boys and 1927 girls beg to differ.

1. Amass, H. (2026, March 4). Uta Frith: Why I no longer think autism is a spectrum. Tes. https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/uta-frith-interv…

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