Jean Golding

Jean Golding (born 22 September 1939)^[1] is a British epidemiologist, and founder of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).

Background

Born in Cornwall in 1939, Golding struggled with illness throughout her childhood. Her regular stays in hospital led to a delay in the beginning of her education, eventually starting school when she was six years old. Her family moved to Chester, after a period living in Plymouth, and while in Cheshire she contracted polio, causing her to miss another year of school and causing a disability that would remain with her permanently. Despite these interruptions to her schooling, she earned a place studying mathematics at St Anne's College, Oxford in 1958.^[2]

ALSPAC

In the late 1980s, Golding founded ALSPAC (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children), also known as Children of the 90s, a birth cohort study that produced a highly detailed dataset of children born in the Avon area in 1991 and 1992. It recorded biological, psychological, social and medical information of this group throughout their childhood and into their adult lives.^[3] The dataset is used by researchers across the world,^[2] and it includes interviews, questionnaires and biological samples for a period of over 20 years since the children were born. Golding's decision on what data was useful to collect led to it being used for genetic and epigenetic research worldwide.^[4]

In 2012 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her setting up and developing the cohort.^[2][5] In 2013, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Bristol, acclaimed as an "exemplar of the qualities and values the institution promotes".^[6]

References