Veronica van Heyningen

Early life Veronica (Veronika) Daniel was born in 1946 in Békéscsaba, Hungary. Her parents were survivors of The Holocaust who had been interned in Nazi concentration camps. The majority of their families were murdered in Auschwitz. Her father was a textile engineer who had studied in Germany before World War II, enabling him to work after the war at a textile research institute in Budapest.

She lived at 20 Valley Road in Loughborough. She started at Humphrey Perkins Grammar School from the age of 12, gaining 11 O-levels. She took Physics, Chemistry and Biology A-level, taking part in swimming, and was in the school debating society.

Education Veronica studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge, and was an undergraduate at Girton College, Cambridge where she specialised in genetics from 1965 to 1968. at the University of Oxford.

Research Van Heyningen is a geneticist who studies eye development and disease. Among her research highlights is the discovery of the PAX6 gene, which is mutated in the eye disorder aniridia — the absence of the iris. PAX6 also coordinates the expression of other eye development genes, including the SOX2 and Orthodenticle homeobox 2 (OTX2) genes which are mutated in microphthalmia and anophthalmia. In the context of PAX6, she has explored in detail mechanisms of long-range gene regulation and aspects of phenotype variation. She was awarded the Carter Medal of the Clinical Genetics Society in 2011. Other awards include:

1991 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholar 1997 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) 1999 Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) 2002 Nominated a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) 2007 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) Interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili on The Life Scientific in 2014.