RIP

Donald Triplett, First Person Diagnosed With Autism, Dies at 89

“He was in his own world, but if you gave him two, three-digit numbers, he could multiply them faster than you could get the answer on a calculator,” CEO Allen Breland said.

Donald Triplett, the first person diagnosed with autism, has died at 89. Triplett, a Mississippi man, was first diagnosed with the condition as a child, in a paper where he was known as “Case 1” and went on to shape how autism was studied in decades to come. Triplett went on to work 65 years at a Mississippi bank, where he was a “fixture in our hearts,” the bank wrote on Facebook. “He was in his own world, but if you gave him two, three-digit numbers, he could multiply them faster than you could get the answer on a calculator,” Bank of Forest CEO Allen Breland said of Triplett. An avid golfer and traveler, Triplett is remembered by colleagues as a math and music whiz, who was active in his church choir. His well-traveled life, documented in the book In A Different Key: The Story of Autism, has “offered promise to other families dealing with the unique realities of autism,” his obituary reads.