Obituary
Barrie Patrick Marmion Clinical microbiologist best known for work on Q fever. He was born in Alverstoke, UK, on May 20, 1920, and died in Adelaide, Australia, on July 12, 2014, aged 94 years. Barrie Marmion was a British doctor who lived for much of his career in Australia; but anyone looking back over his working life might well have surmised that he was actually an Australian who lived and worked for part of his life in the UK. He held senior posts in both countries, becoming known for his longstanding interest in Q fever, the bacterial infection carried most commonly by sheep, cattle, and goats and caused by Coxiella burnetii. While many academics make major international career moves once or twice, Marmion did so three times. And with his Australian wife it was in his adopted country he chose to remain when he retired from his last job. The son of a pharmacist, he was educated at University College London and the Welsh National School of Medicine in Cardiff. He graduated in 1944 and trained in pathology through the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS), working in Cambridge and at the new PHLS Virus Reference Laboratory in north London. He had his first taste of Australia in 1951 when he joined the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne for a year. Here he worked on respiratory viruses and Murray Valley encephalitis. He shared lab facilities with Frank Macfarlane Burnet, who would later share the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It was back in the UK that Marmion began working on Q fever, first in Cambridge and later as head of a new PHLS virus laboratory in Leeds, where he published the first description 684
of Q fever endocarditis. During this time he also showed, concurrently with other researchers, that a mycoplasma was the cause of Eaton’s primary atypical pneumonia. Marmion’s desire to return to Australia was fulfilled in 1963. Appointed Professor of Microbiology at Melbourne’s newly opened Monash University School of Medicine, he created an undergraduate teaching course in microbiology, and organised the school’s postgraduate training. The work was satisfying, but also hard; Monash in those days was not overendowed with either money or staff. Knowing he’d have better funding and more time for research in the UK he accepted an invitation to become Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Edinburgh. “Shortly after he arrived in Edinburgh there was an outbreak of high mortality hepatitis B in the renal unit”, says Christopher Burrell, Head of the University of Adelaide’s Infectious Disease Laboratories. “This rocked everybody in Edinburgh at the time.” Marmion’s response to the crisis did much to consolidate the principles underlying the control of blood-borne infections more generally. He also paved the way for his colleagues Ken Murray, Burrell (at that time working in Edinburgh), and others to succeed in cloning the hepatitis B virus. He returned to Australia in 1979, this time to join the Division of Medical Virology at the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science (IMVS) in Adelaide. He continued researching Q fever, developed a vaccine against it, and also built the virology research division into one of the leading groups in the country. But research was not his only concern, says Burrell. “He was a well-rounded medical microbiologist. In Edinburgh he ran the diagnostic service at the Royal Infirmary as well as being an academic. And the job he came to in Adelaide was primarily to provide a diagnostic service in virology. He was a good administrator—firm but fair.” Marmion maintained his interest in Q fever after his retirement from IMVS, and played a key part in the successful introduction of a vaccine against the infection. Burrell admired Marmion as a mentor and a friend. He recalls him as being dignified and authoritative. “He could appear formal and distant and even forbidding, but he had a ready smile and a good wit. He was thoughtful about people and attentive to them.” Jon Ayres, Professor of Environmental and Respiratory Medicine at the University of Birmingham, was contacted by Marmion in 1990 following his group’s report on an outbreak of Q fever in the UK. They started collaborating on the chronic fatigue syndrome that sometimes follows recovery from the acute phase of the illness. “His science was meticulous”, says Ayres. “He had an exceptional brain, an amazing memory, and an ability to collate things. At the age of 92 he was still giving me lectures on the niceties of T-cell function and things like that.” Marmion remained involved in science to the end of his life. He leaves his wife, Diana, and a daughter, Jane.
Geoff Watts www.thelancet.com Vol 385 February 21, 2015
Barrie Patrick Marmion Clinical microbiologist best known for work on Q fever. He was born in Alverstoke, UK, on May 20, 1920, and died in Adelaide, Australia, on July 12, 2014, aged 94 years. Barrie Marmion was a British doctor who lived for much of his career in Australia; but anyone looking back over his working life might well have surmised that he was actually an Australian who lived and worked for part of his life in the UK. He held senior posts in both countries, becoming known for his longstanding interest in Q fever, the bacterial infection carried most commonly by sheep, cattle, and goats and caused by Coxiella burnetii. While many academics make major international career moves once or twice, Marmion did so three times. And with his Australian wife it was in his adopted country he chose to remain when he retired from his last job. The son of a pharmacist, he was educated at University College London and the Welsh National School of Medicine in Cardiff. He graduated in 1944 and trained in pathology through the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS), working in Cambridge and at the new PHLS Virus Reference Laboratory in north London. He had his first taste of Australia in 1951 when he joined the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne for a year. Here he worked on respiratory viruses and Murray Valley encephalitis. He shared lab facilities with Frank Macfarlane Burnet, who would later share the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It was back in the UK that Marmion began working on Q fever, first in Cambridge and later as head of a new PHLS virus laboratory in Leeds, where he published the first description 684
of Q fever endocarditis. During this time he also showed, concurrently with other researchers, that a mycoplasma was the cause of Eaton’s primary atypical pneumonia. Marmion’s desire to return to Australia was fulfilled in 1963. Appointed Professor of Microbiology at Melbourne’s newly opened Monash University School of Medicine, he created an undergraduate teaching course in microbiology, and organised the school’s postgraduate training. The work was satisfying, but also hard; Monash in those days was not overendowed with either money or staff. Knowing he’d have better funding and more time for research in the UK he accepted an invitation to become Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Edinburgh. “Shortly after he arrived in Edinburgh there was an outbreak of high mortality hepatitis B in the renal unit”, says Christopher Burrell, Head of the University of Adelaide’s Infectious Disease Laboratories. “This rocked everybody in Edinburgh at the time.” Marmion’s response to the crisis did much to consolidate the principles underlying the control of blood-borne infections more generally. He also paved the way for his colleagues Ken Murray, Burrell (at that time working in Edinburgh), and others to succeed in cloning the hepatitis B virus. He returned to Australia in 1979, this time to join the Division of Medical Virology at the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science (IMVS) in Adelaide. He continued researching Q fever, developed a vaccine against it, and also built the virology research division into one of the leading groups in the country. But research was not his only concern, says Burrell. “He was a well-rounded medical microbiologist. In Edinburgh he ran the diagnostic service at the Royal Infirmary as well as being an academic. And the job he came to in Adelaide was primarily to provide a diagnostic service in virology. He was a good administrator—firm but fair.” Marmion maintained his interest in Q fever after his retirement from IMVS, and played a key part in the successful introduction of a vaccine against the infection. Burrell admired Marmion as a mentor and a friend. He recalls him as being dignified and authoritative. “He could appear formal and distant and even forbidding, but he had a ready smile and a good wit. He was thoughtful about people and attentive to them.” Jon Ayres, Professor of Environmental and Respiratory Medicine at the University of Birmingham, was contacted by Marmion in 1990 following his group’s report on an outbreak of Q fever in the UK. They started collaborating on the chronic fatigue syndrome that sometimes follows recovery from the acute phase of the illness. “His science was meticulous”, says Ayres. “He had an exceptional brain, an amazing memory, and an ability to collate things. At the age of 92 he was still giving me lectures on the niceties of T-cell function and things like that.” Marmion remained involved in science to the end of his life. He leaves his wife, Diana, and a daughter, Jane.
Geoff Watts www.thelancet.com Vol 385 February 21, 2015
