Anita Harding

Biography

Born in Ireland, Harding was educated at the King Edward VI High School for Girls and the Royal Free Hospital Medical School, where she qualified in 1975. She married neurology professor P.K. Thomas two years later, and trained as a neurologist. She pursued further clinical training at Hammersmith Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and worked with laboratories in Cardiff and the United States to learn the burgeoning field of neurogenetics. In 1985 she established the first neurogenetics research group in the United Kingdom at the UCL Institute of Neurology (UCLIN) in Queen Square, London while still a lecturer at that institution. In 1986 she was a senior lecturer at the UCLIN; a position she held for nine years.

In 1988 Harding played an instrumental role in the establishment of the European Neurological Society. She died of colorectal cancer, 6 days before her 43rd birthday and shortly before she was to take up the chair in Clinical Neurology at the UCLIN. A person with great charm and wit, she referred to herself as the "wobbly doctor". On learning of her terminal condition, she is reported to have said "[A]t least I won't have to buy Windows 95".

In 1996, she was posthumously awarded the ABN Medal by the Association of British Neurologists. In 2019, the journal Nature named their custom typeface in her honor.