Which 20th-century author is credited with the first recorded use of the word 'nerd' in a 1950 children's book?

Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss used “Nerd” as the name of a fanciful creature in his 1950 children’s book If I Ran the Zoo, apparently the word’s first occurrence in print. The modern slang sense appeared in print by 1951, but whether it derived directly from Seuss remains uncertain.