Veronica van Heyningen

Veronica is a geneticist whose research transformed understanding of how the eye develops and how genetic mutations lead to eye disease. She spent nearly four decades at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, where she led the Medical and Developmental Genetics Section until her retirement in 2012.

Her most significant discovery was the identification of the PAX6 gene, which is mutated in aniridia – a condition in which the iris of the eye is absent. Her work revealed that PAX6 also regulates other genes involved in eye development, with implications for related conditions including microphthalmia and anophthalmia.

Veronica's career is also notable for the personal journey behind it. Born in Hungary in 1946 to Holocaust survivors, she arrived in the UK as a refugee at the age of eleven. She went on to study at Cambridge, Oxford and Northwestern University in the US before settling in Edinburgh.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and was appointed CBE for services to science in 2010. She is a patron of Aniridia Network UK, supporting people affected by the condition her research helped to illuminate.