Ken Nakayama

Ken Nakayama is an American psychologist. Prior to retirement he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is now an emeritus professor at Harvard.

Nakayama is known for his work on prosopagnosia (an inability to recognize faces) and super recognisers (people with significantly better-than-average face recognition ability). A notable contribution is from his work on surface processing by the human visual system.

Nakayama received his BA from Haverford College and PhD from UCLA. From 1971 to 1990, he was at the Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco. Since then, he has been at Harvard University.

Nakayama helped in the formation and founding of the Vision Sciences Society and served as its first president. In 2016, the Society established the Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science in honor of his numerous significant contributions. In 2017, he received the Edgar D. Tillyer Award from The Optical Society.