Folk Figure. Though she was to have a distinguished academic career, she will be remembered as the 11 year old girl who gave the planet Pluto its name. Raised in a learned family (her late father had been a professor of Bible interpretation at Oxford), Venetia had long been interested in both astronomy and mythology. On March 14, 1930, she was at breakfast with her grandfather Falconer Madan, retired librarian of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Their discussion topic was the planet recently discovered by the Lowell Observatory in Arizona; realizing that the newly found world was obviously a dark and forbidding place, she said "Why not call it Pluto"?, after the Roman name of the Greek god of the underworld, Hades. Mr. Madan passed the suggestion along to his friend, Oxford astronomer Herbert Hall Turner, who then relayed it on to a committee charged with finding a name; discussion was heated (some associate "Pluto" with "Satan"), but Venetia really had the only serious horse in the race, "Kronos", as the Greek equivalent of "Saturn", already being taken, and "Onehtn" deemed unpronounceable. Pluto got its name on (which was to be shared with Mickey Mouse's dog and element 94 in the periodic table) on May 1, 1930, Venetia's grandfather gave her a five-pound reward, and she got on with her life. She studied mathematics at Newnham College, Cambridge, became an accountant, and later taught math and economics at two girls' schools in London until retiring in the 1980s. In 1947, she married classical scholar Maxwell Phair (deceased 2006). Asteroid 6235 Burney (discovered in 1987) carries her name, as does a dust measuring instrument on the New Horizons spacecraft. A documentary, "Naming Pluto", was released earlier this year. One thing was to annoy her over the years; the idea that she had gotten "Pluto" from the Disney character. She was to tell the BBC "It has now been satisfactorily proven that the dog was named after the planet, rather than the other way around. So, one is vindicated".

Wife of Edward Maxwell Phair (1908 - 2006)

Married: 30 December 1947

St. John's College Chapel, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England