Eric Barnard

Eric Albert Barnard FRS (2 July 1927 – 23 May 2018) was a British neuroscientist, and Professor at University of Cambridge.[1]

He was educated at King's College London (BSc; PhD, 1956). He was a fellow of King's College from 1956–1959 after which he was Assistant Lecturer (1959–1960) and Lecturer (1960–1964). He was an Association Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology at the State University of New York (1964–1965), Professor of Biochemistry (1965–1976) and then Head of the Biochemistry Department (1969–1976). He was appointed Rank Professor of Physiological Biochemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London from 1976 to 1985, acting as Chairman of the Division of Life Sciences (1977–1985) and Head of the Department of Biochemistry (1979–1985).

He was a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of California in 1960–61 and a Guggenheim Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 19 March 1981[2] and according to his application citation: "was distinguished internationally for his contributions to protein chemistry and neurochemistry. He pioneered affinity labelling by identifying His-119 in the active centre of ribonuclease-A and his sequence studies of this enzyme in vertebrates have illuminated protein evolution. He first purified native yeast hexokinase and has contributed much to our present knowledge of its structure and isoenzymes. He developed the use of labelled inhibitors to locate and quantify acetylcholinesterase and acetylcholine receptors in the ultrastructure of the nerve-muscle synapse. He was the first to purify the mammalian cholinergic receptor and is using it to construct model synaptic membranes. These studies are leading him to an effective chemotherapy for muscular dystrophy." [3]

He died on 23 May 2018 at the age of 90.[4] He had married Penelope J. Hennessy in 1956.