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Mary Cannon

Irish psychiatrist and research scientist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ18719324
Source-derived summary

Mary Cannon is an Irish psychiatrist, research scientist, public figure, and former member of the Cannabis Risk Alliance. She has received the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland's "Doctors Award" for psychiatry and is among the most highly cited scientists in the world. Cannon is known for her views on cannabis, being described as 'anti-cannabis'. She is best known in the field of psychiatry for her study of the risk factors for mental illness in young people.

Education

As an undergraduate, Cannon studied medicine at University College Dublin and trained as a psychiatrist with Eadbhard O'Callaghan at the St John of God Hospital in Dublin. She then won an "advanced training fellowship" from the Wellcome Trust to study with Robin Murray at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

Cannon cites her mother, a schoolteacher, and principal, as a possible influence: "My mother could predict which kids would have difficulties and which ones would do well", recalls Cannon. "I always found it interesting that the seeds are sown so early"."

Career

Cannon is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, as well as a consulting psychiatrist at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.

Cannon researches risk factors for psychosis and other mental illnesses in young people. She and her research group have made important discoveries about the correlations of traumatic events in early childhood, including prenatal infection and childhood bullying, to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia in adults.

Editorial summary

“Mary Cannon” enters the record as irish psychiatrist and research scientist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mary, Cannon and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current 240-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-06-02. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Mary, Cannon and Irish.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Mary Cannon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mary, Cannon and Irish provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18719324. VIAF identifies the subject as 307449913. The Library of Congress control number is no2014003831. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mary Cannon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mary Cannon primary sources, Mary Cannon archive and Mary research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mary Cannon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.