Peter Richard Huttenlocher (February 23, 1931 – August 15, 2013) was a German-American pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist who discovered how the brain develops in children.
[3][4] Huttenlocher discovered that synapses are created in the first few months of a child's development, and then "pruned", by examining the brains of about 50 people, mostly infants and young children who had died unexpectedly, but also a few adults, one of them age 90.
[2] Huttenlocher also became an early authority on Reye's syndrome, and in 1987 launched the first clinic in the United States for children with tuberous sclerosis.
[4] His findings have influenced government policy and parents’ priorities, putting more emphasis on the importance of early education.
[4] His parents became divorced when he was young, and his mother, Else, an opera singer, refused to join the Nazi Party and fled to the United States in 1937.
He met his future wife Janellen Huttenlocher (née Burns) (February 17, 1932 - November 20, 2016) at the University of Buffalo in New York, from where he graduated summa cum laude in philosophy in 1953.