Rosa Susan Penelope Beddington FRS (23 March 1956 – 18 May 2001) was a British biologist whose career had a major impact on

developmental biology Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...

Education and early life

Beddington was born on 23 March 1956, the second daughter of

Roy Roy or Roi is a masculine given name and a family surname with varied origins. France In France, this family name originated from the Normans, the descendants of Norse Vikings who migrated to Amigny, a commune in Manche, Normandy.. The deriva ...

and Anna Beddington (''née'' Griffith). She was raised with her elder sister, Pippa Beddington. She attended

Sherborne School for Girls Sherborne Girls, formally known as Sherborne School for Girls, is an independent day and boarding school for girls, located in Sherborne, North Dorset, England. There were 485 pupils attending in 2019–2020, with more than 90 per cent of them ...

where she not only excelled in academics, but in her arts and sports programs as well. She later attended

Brasenose College Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The library and chapel were added in the m ...

, Oxford; from 1974, obtaining a First in Physiological Sciences in 1977. She was the first woman to earn a first-class undergraduate degree at Brasenose. Beddington embarked on the study of anterior-posterior axial patterning in mammalian embryos, beginning with her doctoral thesis entitled, "Studies on cell fate and cell potency in the postimplantation mammalian embryo" supervised by Richard Gardner and Virginia Papaioannou, and was awarded a

DPhil A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1981.

Career

Beddington published numerous high-profile papers in her relatively short career (several important papers being published posthumously). She worked extensively on the developmental genetics of axial patterning,

germ layer A germ layer is a primary layer of cell (biology), cells that forms during embryonic development. The three germ layers in vertebrates are particularly pronounced; however, all eumetazoans (animals that are sister taxa to the sponges) produce tw ...

specification, and other phenomena of

gastrulation Gastrulation is the stage in the early embryonic development of most animals, during which the blastula (a single-layered hollow sphere of cells), or in mammals, the blastocyst, is reorganized into a two-layered or three-layered embryo known as ...

in mammals, including demonstrating that the

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics * Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines ...

is the organizer in mammals. Her technical contributions to experimental

embryology Embryology (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, ''-logy, -logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the Prenatal development (biology), prenatal development of gametes (sex ...

include surgical re-implantation into the uterus to extend the time an experimentally manipulated embryo can be cultured and the use of a

transgenic A transgene is a gene that has been transferred naturally, or by any of a number of genetic engineering techniques, from one organism to another. The introduction of a transgene, in a process known as transgenesis, has the potential to change the ...

marker ( beta-galactosidase) to identify transplant versus host tissue in experimental embryos. While a fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, (now Cancer Research UK) laboratory in Oxford, Beddington and

Elizabeth Robertson Elizabeth Jane Robertson is a British developmental biologist based at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford. She is Professor of Developmental Biology at Oxford and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. She is ...

recognised the potential of

embryonic stem cell Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are Cell potency#Pluripotency, pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, an early-stage pre-Implantation (human embryo), implantation embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4� ...

s for the study of genetic manipulation after demonstrating the ability of these cells to colonise developing embryos. Beddington taught at the newly established Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories summer course on manipulating the mouse embryo from 1986, including two years as co-organiser with Robertson. Beddington was the meetings secretary for the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) from 1990 to 1995. In 1993, she established and led a Division of Mammalian Development at the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR became part of the new F ...

. She became on the first women to excel in this area of STEM at the time.

Awards and honours

A talented artist, she designed the Waddington Medal, awarded for outstanding performance and contribution to the field of

. Beddington herself received the Waddington Medal in 1999. Additionally, the British Society for Developmental Biology has established in her honor The Beddington Medal, a national prize given for the most outstanding PhD dissertation in developmental biology in the previous year. Its design is based upon drawings by Beddington. Her nomination for the Royal Society reads:

Personal life

Beddington was married to

Robin Denniston Robin Denniston (25 December 1926 – 6 April 2012) was a British publisher, author and minister. He worked for Collins, Hodder and Stoughton, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Thomson Publications and Oxford University Press. ''The Guardian'' indicated in ...

. She died on 18 May 2001 from complications of cancer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beddington, Rosa 1956 births 2001 deaths 20th-century British biologists 20th-century British women scientists British women biologists Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford British developmental biologists Female fellows of the Royal Society National Institute for Medical Research faculty People educated at Sherborne Girls Scientists from Hampshire