1933 - CdLS is identified by Dr. Cornelia de Lange.

Dutch physician Dr. Cornelia de Lange identifies two children with similar features and describes the set of symptoms that compose the syndrome.   

The first child had pneumonia and feeding difficulties. She was very small for her age, with a proportionately smaller head circumference. Other unusual facial characteristics were noted by Dr. de Lange. Soon after, she saw a second little girl with common medical problems and physical characteristics. Nowhere was the puzzled physician able to find a similar patient described in the medical literature. Cornelia de Lange is now generally credited with describing the collection of symptoms comprising the syndrome that bears her name. 

The syndrome is sometimes referred to as Brachmann-de Lange syndrome after Dr. W. Brachmann, who described a similar patient in 1916. Dr. Brachmann may have overlooked his report because he concentrated on characteristics of the upper limbs and wrote on the facial symptoms less specifically.