Kenneth Willoughby Heaton

Kenneth Willoughby Heaton (3 August 1936 – 4 March 2013)[1] was a British physician who was an expert in intestinal diseases.

He defined a set of criteria that could be used to diagnose irritable bowel syndrome based on a person's symptoms, and he developed the Bristol stool scale.

[2] His family later moved to England, where Heaton attended Marlborough College before completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Cambridge.

During a year-long research fellowship at Duke University Medical Center in the United States, he developed an interest in bile salts;[1] he later wrote a book titled Bile Salts in Health and Disease.

His research led to the development of the Rome criteria for diagnosis of functional gastrointestinal disorders including IBS.