Oh yes, [it is important to have a happy marriage]. If we hadn't had a happy marriage where my husband gave me space and not only gave me space, actually actively helped to do it. So if one of the kids was sick, it wasn't necessarily me that stayed at home, absolutely not. It was most likely that he would stay at home because he could work from home more easily. And the other thing was huge support from actually my mother, who has just died. She came over every summer holiday for about three weeks. Kids have six weeks holiday, what are you going to do with them? You go three weeks on holiday as a family, but you've still got three weeks left over. So, my mother came over for about 10 years, three weeks every summer. So, there was a lot of people around who helped.

Dr. Christine Mummery is a professor of developmental biology at Leiden University and head of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at the Leiden University Medical Center. Her work specializes in stem cell biology, cardiovascular development, and developmental biology.

In 1974, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics, electronics, and mathematics from the University of Nottingham, UK and in 1978 received her PhD in biophysics from the University of London, UK for her research at King’s College London. She received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Royal Society, UK from 1978 to 1980, and in 1981 continued her fellowship at the Hubrecht Institute working with carcinoma cells. In 1985, she was appointed to a tenured staff scientist working on developmental biology and differentiation.

In 2011, Dr. Mummery founded the iPSC&OoC Hotel facility in the Leiden University Medical Center. From 2009 to 20019, she was the head of the department of Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University and guest professor at the University of Twente from 2015 to 2023. She was president of the ISSCR from 2020 to 2021 and is the founding editor of its journal, Stem Cell Reports.

Dr. Mummery has received several awards for her work in developmental biology, including the 2014 Hugo van de Poelgeest Prize for Animal Alternatives, the 2014 Hans Biomendaal Medal for innovative interdisciplinary research, being an elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2015 and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, the 2021 Fondation Lefoulon Delalande-Institut de France prize for cardiovascular physiology, and the ISSCR Public Service Award in 2023.