Letter by Ruth van Heyningen

Upon attending the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at Oxford University in 1951, Ruth van Heyningen, who died at the age of 101, was a pioneering researcher of ophthalmic biochemistry. Tony and Ruth wrote together a key book, Biochemistry of the Eye, which Ruth said later included nearly everything known about the subject at the time.

Her studies uncovered novel cataract forming mechanisms and showed that monosaccharide sugars a....