Lionel Sharples Penrose, FRS (11 June 1898 – 12 May 1972) was an English psychiatrist, medical geneticist, paediatrician, mathematician and chess theorist, who carried out pioneering work on the genetics of intellectual disability.

[8] On leaving school in 1916, he served, as a conscientious objector, with the Friends' Ambulance Unit/British Red Cross in France until the end of the First World War.

Harris also reported the "long delay" in changing this name was due to "legal problems" associated with the original donation from Francis Galton and described how Penrose simply ignored the "eugenics" element of his job title.

[9] Penrose's Law[5][6] states that the population size of prisons and psychiatric hospitals are inversely related, although this is generally viewed as something of an oversimplification.

Penrose was particularly interested in different facets of biology, for example fingerprints, demography, and cytogenetics, which were a result of his research into the etiology of intellectual disability, especially Down syndrome.

He did intensive research on the latter, communicating the results of his investigations in 1963 and winning the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation Award for his contributions to the understanding of the causes of intellectual disability.

"[3]Penrose was awarded the James Spence Gold Medal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 1964 for major contributions in human genetics and extensive research into Down syndrome and Intellectual disability.