Venetia Phair was born on 11 July 1918 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK. She was married to Edward Maxwell Phair. She died on 30 April 2009 in Banstead, Surrey, England, UK.
Upon being told by her grandfather during breakfast on 14 March 1930 that a new planet had been discovered lying beyond Neptune by scientists at the Lowell Observatory, she proposed that it be named Pluto after the Roman god of the underworld. Lowell officially named it Pluto on 24 May 1930.