Jane Somerville (née Platnauer; 24 January 1933) is a British emeritus professor of cardiology, Imperial College, who is best known for defining the concept and subspecialty of grown ups with congenital heart disease (GUCH) and being chosen as the physician involved with Britain's first heart transplantation in 1968.

Jane Somerville was born in Edwardes Square, Kensington, London,[1] on 24 January 1933[2] to Joseph Bertram Platnauer, who was a theatre critic for the Tatler magazine[1] and Pearl Ashton who worked on Vogue.

[2][3] Her early childhood was spent under the guidance of a strict Irish governess at the family residence in Park Square which later became the site for The Prince's Trust.

[1] During the Second World War and The Blitz, when children were ordered out of London, Somerville was sent to a boys preparatory school in the Welsh village of Portmeirion.

[1] Following studies in the sciences at Queen's College school, Harley Street, London, Somerville gained admission into the male dominated Guy's Hospital Medical School, where women medical students had been present for only the previous two years and the class was more than 90% men.

She recognised the unmet need of the increasing number of adolescents and adults who were now surviving the heart conditions they were born with, thus founding the concept of GUCH.

[2] Somerville also worked alongside cardio-thoracic surgeon Donald Ross, who chose her to be the cardiologist for the first heart transplantation in the UK in 1968.

[8] They co-authored a number of innovative articles, including in 1966, the first report of the use of a homograft aortic valve to repair pulmonary atresia.

[2][9] In 1975, Somerville, "always feisty and prepared for battle",[2] succeeded in raising enough funds to open the world's first hospital ward solely for the use of children and adolescents with congenital heart disease.

[1][2] Somerville's pioneering GUCH care and teaching led her to be followed by "Unicorns",[6] her ex-trainees who gather at the World Congress of Paediatric Cardiology every year to celebrate her life and work.

[12] A "self-proclaimed trouble maker", she shared the event at Chicago with Eugene Braunwald, Valentín Fuster, Antonio Colombo and Magdi Yacoub, when she spoke about her 50 years with heart surgeons.