Education
Born in Birmingham, Harding was educated at the King Edward VI High School for Girls and the Royal Free Hospital Medical School, where she qualified in 1975.
Born in Birmingham, Harding was educated at the King Edward VI High School for Girls and the Royal Free Hospital Medical School, where she qualified in 1975.
She is known for the discovery with Ian Holt and John Morgan-Hughes of the "first identification of a mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid mutation in human disease and the concept of tissue heteroplasmy of mutant mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid", published in Nature in 1986. She died of colorectal cancer, 6 days before her 43rd birthday and shortly before she was to take up the Chair in Clinical Neurology at the Institute of Neurology in Queen Square, London. On learning of her terminal condition she is reported to have said "t least I won"t have to buy Windows 95".
In 1995 she was posthumously awarded the Association of British Neurologists Medal for her contributions to the science of neurology.