Lawson Wilkins, "founder" of pediatric endocrinology, worked out the apparently paradoxical pathophysiology: that hyperplasia and overproduction of adrenal androgens resulted from impaired capacity for making cortisol. He reported use of adrenal cortical extracts to treat children with CAH in 1950. Genital reconstructive surgery was also pioneered at Hopkins. After application of karyotyping to CAH and other intersex disorders in the 1950s, John Money, JL Hampson, and JG Hampson persuaded both the scientific community and the public that sex assignment should not be based on any single biological criterion, and gender identity was largely learned and has no simple relationship with chromosomes or hormones. See Intersex for a fuller history, including recent controversies over reconstructive surgery. Hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone, and prednisone were available by the late 1950s. By 1980, all of the relevant steroids could be measured in blood by reference laboratories for patient care. By 1990, nearly all specific genes and enzymes had been identified. The last decade, though, has seen a number of new developments, discussed more extensively in congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency:

Debate over the value of genital reconstructive surgery and changing standards
Debate over sex assignment of severely virilized XX infants
New treatments to improve height outcomes
Newborn screening programs to detect CAH at birth
Increasing attempts to treat CAH before birth

Society and culture
People with CAH
Notable people with CAH include:

Jeff Cagandahan is a Filipino who successfully appealed for a change of name and gender on his birth certificate.
I was determined to get as complete a story as possible, determined to get at the base of the facts and to avoid undue exaggeration which was rampant in the conversation of many of the people present at the time of the dissection. He interviewed many people and satisfied himself that Joseph Marzo "conducted himself within the sexual area exclusively as a male", even to the point of contracting the "French disease" on two occasions. The cause of death was another in a series of episodes of vomiting and diarrhea.This account was translated by Alfred Bongiovanni from De Crecchio ("Sopra un caso di apparenzi virili in una donna". Morgagni 7:154–188, 1865) in 1963 for an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. 20th and 21st centuries
The association of excessive sex steroid effects with diseases of the adrenal cortex have been recognized for over a century. The term "adrenogenital syndrome" was applied to both sex-steroid producing tumors and severe forms of CAH for much of the 20th century, before some of the forms of CAH were understood. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which also dates to the first half of the century, has become the preferred term to reduce ambiguity and to emphasize the underlying pathophysiology of the disorders. Much modern understanding and treatment of CAH comes from research conducted at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore in the middle of the 20th century.