Venetia Burney was the daughter of Rev.
Charles Fox Burney,
Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, and his wife Ethel Wordsworth Burney (née Madan). She was the granddaughter of
Falconer Madan (1851–1935), Librarian of the
Bodleian Library of the
University of Oxford. Falconer Madan's brother,
Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of
Eton, had in 1878 suggested the names
Phobos and
Deimos for the
moons of
Mars. On 14 March 1930, Falconer Madan read the story of the new planet's discovery in
The Times and mentioned it to his granddaughter Venetia. She suggested the name
Pluto – the Roman god of the Underworld, who was able to make himself invisible − and Madan forwarded the suggestion to astronomer
Herbert Hall Turner, who cabled his American colleagues at
Lowell Observatory.
Clyde Tombaugh liked the proposal because it started with the initials of
Percival Lowell, who had predicted the existence of
Planet X, which they thought was Pluto because it was coincidentally in that position in space. On 1 May 1930, the name Pluto was formally adopted for the new celestial body. but the historical fact is that she was credited as such. Most news coverage done at the time of the discovery of Pluto didn't mention her and the role she played in terms of naming Pluto was mostly forgotten about until a 1984 article from
Sky & Telescope publicized her role. Burney was educated at
Downe House School in
Berkshire and
Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied
economics from 1938–41. After graduation she became a
chartered accountant. Later she became a teacher of
economics and mathematics at girls’ schools in southwest
London She was married to Edward Maxwell Phair from 1947 until his death in 2006. Her husband, a
classicist, later became housemaster and head of English at
Epsom College. She died on 30 April 2009, aged 90, in
Banstead in Surrey. She was buried at Randalls Park Crematorium in
Leatherhead in Surrey. Only a few months before the reclassification of Pluto from a planet to a
dwarf planet, with a debate going on about the issue, she said in an interview, "At my age, I've been largely indifferent [to the debate]; though I suppose I would prefer it to remain a planet." ==Legacy==