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Professor Jean Golding

Jean Golding
Jean Golding
Born
22 September 1939

Professor Jean Golding designed the world leading Children of the 90s study in genetic research that has led to many discoveries around children’s health.


As a child, Golding was interested in biology and animal behaviour, but after suffering from polio at the age of 14, she was unable to spend long periods of time working in a laboratory. Instead, she studied mathematics at Oxford. After graduating, she spent some time teaching and had two children, before moving into the epidemiological field in the 1960s.

Her early work was on two pioneering studies, the Oxford Record Linkage Study and the 1958 national birth cohort. She helped to design the National Greek Perinatal Survey and the Jamaican Birth Survey. Golding also helped found the international journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, of which she continued as editor-in-chief for 25 years.

It was by analysing data in these large studies that she became aware of the importance of fine detail. She was appointed senior research fellow at Bristol in 1980, where she began to design the detailed protocol for the Children of the 90s study, known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, or ALSPAC. The project has followed the lives of thousands of families and has contributed hugely to genetic research and our understanding of human health, analysing the genome of thousands of people.

ALSPAC advanced the work of previous birth cohorts as it recruited women when they were still pregnant, rather than after the birth of their child. This allowed a bank of biological samples to be established, ranging from blood samples from the mother before birth through to the storage of the placenta after birth. There are now more than a million samples which have been collected over more than 20 years.

Unquestionably the world leading study of its type

Professor George Davey Smith

During the first few years of ALSPAC, mothers and their partners completed many questionnaires. When the children reached the age of seven they were invited for a detailed clinical assessment. This cyclical activity of examinations and collection of samples, which continues today, has led to an unprecedented volume of data as the youngsters move from childhood to adulthood. Some of the original children are now becoming parents themselves and will continue to be studied.

ALSPAC has led to many findings, including the contribution of domestic air pollution to asthma and the risk of developing eczema if children are too clean. The research also showed that mothers’ levels of depression and anxiety were higher during the pregnancy than in the postnatal period.

Professor Golding also used ALSPAC data to allay fears that getting babies to sleep on their backs would affect their development (sleeping on their backs had been shown to reduce incidences of sudden infant mortality). This helped to advance the ‘back to sleep’ campaigns.

In 2011 Jean Golding was awarded an OBE.