J. E. Barnard

Joseph Edwin Barnard was a British microscopist and businessman known for his refinements to the ultraviolet microscope and for taking early photomicrographs of viruses, including ectromelia virus, foot-and-mouth disease virus and vesicular stomatitis virus. In a widely publicised paper of 1925 he published images of supposed viruses isolated from various avian and mammalian tumours, but the results could not be replicated by others and he did not publish on the topic again. He headed the department of applied optics at the National Institute for Medical Research on an honorary part-time basis, while carrying out his business as a hatter, from 1920 until his retirement during the Second World War. He was an elected fellow of the Institute of Physics (1923) and the Royal Society (1924), and an honorary member of the Royal Microscopical Society (1948), of which he was president three times. His Practical Photo-micrography (1911) was a standard textbook in the field.