Vanessa Wright was a consultant paediatric surgeon at the Royal London Hospital. She was born on 1 August 1943 in Chichester, Sussex, and studied medicine at University College, London, qualifying in 1966. She was a registrar at Queen Mary's Hospital for Children, Carshalton and at University College Hospital, London, and then went to Australia, where she was a senior registrar at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. In 1977, she was appointed as a consultant surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney, as the first specialist paediatric surgeon in East London. Ten years later, she returned to University College Hospital, again as the first specialist paediatric surgeon, and was also a consultant at St Bartholomew's and the Royal London hospitals. For three years, she was chair of the board of examiners for the intercollegiate fellowship. She retired to East Sussex, where she renovated a farmhouse and cultivated her garden. Vanessa Mary Wright died on 12 June 2015. She was 71.