Beate Hermelin

Beate's sister de:Dorothee Fliess was the only member of the family who stayed in Berlin during the Second World War.

Beate and Rolf regularly took an annual holiday in Zermatt, and travelled frequently to their favourite towns in Europe.

After gaining her degree Alan Clark suggested that she do a PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry (now part of King's College London), in the experimental psychology of mental deficiency.

From this point onwards, a lifelong scientific collaboration had been forged, and Hermelin joined O'Connor on the staff of the Medical Research Council.

Beate Hermelin was a gifted experimentalist who was inspired by paradigms from general experimental psychology to apply them to unusual and difficult populations, that is, learning disabled children, who at that time lived in long stay hospitals and were thought to be ineducable.

[3] Jointly with Neil O'Connor she started an important series of experiments to elucidate childhood autism[4] Another of their research projects concerned comparisons of abstract cognitive abilities of individuals with specific sensory impairments, such as lack of vision or hearing.