Renata Laxova (July 15, 1931 – November 30, 2020) was an American pediatric geneticist and a professor of genetics at the Departments of Pediatrics and Medical Genetics, Waisman Center,

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison ...

. She was the discoverer of the Neu-Laxová syndrome, a rare congenital abnormality involving multiple organs, with autosomal recessive inheritance.

Biography

She was born and educated in Brno,

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, and survived

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

by inclusion in the

Kindertransport The ''Kindertransport'' (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children (but not their parents) from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World ...

, and spent the war years in England. She returned to Czechoslovakia after the war, received a medical degree and training as a pediatrician there. Her Doctoral thesis from the University of Brno was ''Genetika isoamylas: Studie nového lidského polymorfismu.'' (in English: "Genetics of Isoamylases: Study of the New Human Polymorphism") in 1967. After the

invasion of Czechoslovakia The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia refers to the events of 20–21 August 1968, when the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Rep ...

in August 1968, she escaped a second time to England, where she worked with

Lionel Penrose Lionel Sharples Penrose, FRS (11 June 1898 – 12 May 1972) was an English psychiatrist, medical geneticist, paediatrician, mathematician and chess theorist, who carried out pioneering work on the genetics of intellectual disability. Penrose ...

at the Kennedy-Galton Centre for Medical and Community Genetics in London on mental retardation. She was appointed to the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975, where she worked in its research center for human developmental disabilities, the Waisman Center, on prenatal diagnosis and genetics counseling. She became professor emeritus in 2003.

Publications

Laxova was the author of 64 peer-reviewed papers, as shown in

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

. Her most cited are: *"Diagnostic criteria for Walker-Warburg syndrome" by Dobyns, W.B., Pagon, R.A., Armstrong, D., Curry, C.J.R., Greenberg, F., Grix, A., Holmes, L.B., Laxova, R., Michels, V.V., Robinow, M., Zimmerman, R.L. '' American Journal of Medical Genetics'' Volume 32, Issue 2, 1989, Pages 195–210. Cited 207 times *"The critical region of the human Xq" by Therman, E., Laxova, R., Susman, B. ''Human Genetics'' Volume 85, Issue 5, 1990, Pages 455-461 cited 85 times *"Mutations of the P gene in oculocutaneous albinism, ocular albinism, and Prader-Willi syndrome plus albinism" by Lee, S.-T., Nicholls, R.D., Bundey, S., Laxova, R., Musarella, M., Spritz, R.A. ''New England Journal of Medicine'' Volume 330, Issue 8, February 24, 1994, Pages 529–534, cited 80 times.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laxova, Renata 1931 births 2020 deaths University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Kindertransport refugees Masaryk University alumni American geneticists Czech Jews Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States American women non-fiction writers Czechoslovak expatriates in the United Kingdom American women academics 21st-century American women