Ken Nakayama is the former Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Harvard University. He is most recently known for his work on prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces.

He 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 faculty at Harvard University. He helped in the formation of Vision Sciences Society and was its first president.