Murray Barr

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Murray Llewellyn Barr (born June 20, 1908 in Belmont (Ontario) , † May 4, 1995 in London (Ontario) ) was a Canadian anatomist and neuro- histologist . He is the discoverer of sex chromatin .

life and work

Barr, grandson of Northern Irish immigrants, studied from 1920 at the University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1930, an MD in 1933 and a Master of Science degree in 1938. After completing his MD, he worked as a general practitioner for two years In 1936 he returned to the university as a lecturer ("Instructor") for anatomy, where he wanted to specialize in the field of neuroanatomy . This was interrupted by military service in World War II from 1939. In 1951 he became professor of anatomy at the University of Western Ontario. Initially, he dealt with neurocytology and the morphology and distribution of synapses in the spinal cord, and later with anomalies of sex chromosomes.

In 1948 he discovered (with his student Ewart George Bertram (* 1923)) the Barr bodies named after him , inactivated X chromosomes in women, and related sex chromatin. The discovery was made when Barr investigated the completely different question of the extent to which increased neuronal activity of cells changes these structurally.

He wrote a textbook on neuroanatomy that was widely used in Anglo-Saxon countries and the cytology of the nervous system was one of his main research interests. He also worked on the genetics of intellectual disability , for which he received the Joseph P. Kennedy Junior Award in 1962. Here the Barr-Shaver-Carr syndrome is named after him and David H. Carr and Evelyn Louise Shaver and the Carr-Barr-Plunkett syndrome (also named after Earl R. Plunkett ).

Together with colleagues, he developed an oral swab to examine chromosome defects (sometimes called the Barr test). It is still widely used today, including on newborns.

From the late 1960s onwards, he was mainly concerned with the history of medicine.

In 1963 he received the Canada Gairdner International Award . He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society . In 1968 he became Officer of the Order of Canada . In 1959 he received the Flavelle Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. In 1998 he was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame .

Fonts

  • with EG Bertram: A morphological distinction between neurones of the male and female and the behavior of the nucleolar satellite during accelerated nucleoprotein synthesis. In: Nature. Volume 163, (London) 1949, p. 676 f.
  • Barr's The Human Nervous System. An Anatomical Viewpoint , continued in 9th edition by John A. Kiernan, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2008

literature

  • Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach : Barr, Murray Llewellyn. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 146.
  • Murray L. Barr and the discovery of sex chromatin. In: Triangle. Sandoz-Zeitschrift für Med. Wiss. Volume 9, 1969, pp. 114-116.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barr, Bertram A Morphological Distinction between Neurones of the Male and Female, and the Behavior of the Nucleolar Satellite during Accelerated Nucleoprotein Synthesis , Nature, Volume 163, 1949, pp. 676-677
  2. ^ Barr test
personal data
SURNAME Barr, Murray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barr, Murray Llewellyn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian medic
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Belmont (Ontario)
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1995
Place of death London (Ontario)