Margaret A. Kennard

Margaret Alice Kennard (September 25, 1899—December 12, 1975) was a neurologist who principally studied the effects of neurological damage on primates. Her work led to the creation of the Kennard Principle, which posits a negative linear relationship between age of a brain lesion and the outcome expectancy: in other words, that the earlier in life a brain lesion occurs, the more likely it is for some compensation mechanism to reverse at least some of the lesion's bad effects. her paternal grandparents were the businessman and abolitionist Martin Kennard and the naturalist and women's rights activist Caroline Smith Kennard. Kennard graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1922. She earned a Rockefeller Traveling Fellowship for study in Western Europe from 1934 to 1936. She also studied the effects of stimulants and cortical depressants on monkeys with brain damage. This research led to one of the earliest experimental evidence for age effects on neuroplasticity.

She worked closely with John Fulton in her famous infant brain studies.