A conversation with Jean Golding

Jean Golding was born in Cornwall, UK, on 22 September 1939. She read mathematics as her first degree, but then came across epidemiology as a result of a series of accidents. She fell in love with what she saw as a series of detective stories and has continued in the discipline ever since, initially publishing under the name Jean Fedrick. She has concentrated on maternal and child health but is interested in the whole gamut of environmental influences on physical, psychological, and intellectual outcomes. She has been involved in designing studies in Jamaica and other areas around the world but has devoted most of her research career to large UK birth cohort studies, including both the 1958 and 1970 national birth cohort studies. She started the journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology in 1987, continuing as Editor-in-Chief until 2012. In the early 1990s, she initiated the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), an in-depth study starting in early pregnancy and following the parents and their offspring throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence (n~14,000 children). She retired as Scientific and Executive Director of the study at the end of 2005 but continues to work on various aspects of the survey