2026 American Academy of Neurology Abstract Website

Objective:

To highlight how artistic skill contributed to the academic scholarship of Margaret Waddington (1930-2015), the first woman to win the S. Weir Mitchell award of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

Background:

Neurologists are not always encouraged to develop their talents in the humanities. However, neurologist-artists - including Charles Bell (1774-1842), Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) and Nobel Prize-winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) - used skills in visual arts to enhance neuroscientific study.

We explore the life of a lesser-known woman neurologist whose artistic skills led to her career in neuroanatomy.

Design/Methods:

We reviewed published works by Waddington and records and articles relating to her work.

Results:

Waddington was born to American parents in Paris. As a child, she struggled with dyslexia and life in Nazi-occupied Austria, eventually relocating to Vermont, working on a farm to pay for medical school. She received her MD from the University of Vermont in 1961 and practiced as a general neurologist in Rutland, Vermont.

In 1953, the AAN Women’s Auxiliary sponsored an award to encourage early career research, later called the S. Weir Mitchell Award. In 1969, Waddington received this award for “Angiographic Changes in Focal Motor Epilepsy” - the second woman to receive any AAN award.

Waddington’s award-winning work contains hand-copied line drawings of patients’ angiographies. She illustrated other papers with neuroradiologist B. Albert Ring before publishing an Atlas of Cerebral Angiography (1974), an Atlas of the Human Skull (1981), and an Atlas of Intracranial Anatomy and the Human Brain (1984). Reviews commend her skill in artistically capturing brain and skull anatomy.

Waddington retired in 1990 and published at least 30 books of art and writing, including children’s books, watercolors and autobiographies.

Conclusions:

Waddington’s life illustrates how art can be both a restorative activity and an essential, creative and meaningful element of neurology scholarship.