Robert Foster Kennedy

Dr Robert Foster Kennedy MD FRSE (7 February 1884 – 1952) was an Irish-born neurologist largely working in America.

Failing to find suitable work in Ireland he left for the United States in 1910, having successfully found a post at the recently established New York Neurological Institute.

The outbreak of World War I brought him back to Europe where he founded a French Military Hospital at Ris-Orangis, and subsequently formally served in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Working close to the front line he had several narrow escapes, and was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur by France.

His goal was to relieve "the utterly unfit" and "nature's mistakes" of the "agony of living" and to save their parents and the state the cost of caring for them.

[6] "Foster Kennedy, while professor of neurology at Cornell University in New York, argued that all children with proven mental retardation ("feeblemindedness") over the age of five should be put to death.