June Almeida

June Dalziel Almeida
Born June Dalziel Hart
(1930-10-05)5 October 1930
Glasgow, Scotland
Died 1 December 2007(2007-12-01) (aged 77)
Bexhill, England
Nationality Scottish
Citizenship British
Known for Pioneer of immuno-electron microscopy
Spouse(s)
Enriques Rosalio (Henry) Almeida (m. 1954)
,
Phillip Samuel Gardner (m. 1982–1994)
(deceased)
Children 1
Scientific career
Fields Virology, histopathology
Institutions Glasgow Royal Infirmary, St Bartholomew's Hospital, Ontario Cancer Institute, Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Wellcome Research Laboratory
Influenced Albert Kapikian

June Dalziel Almeida (5 October 1930 – 1 December 2007)[1] was a Scottish virologist who, with little formal education, became a Doctor of Science and a pioneer in virus imaging, identification and diagnosis.[2]

Biography

June Dalziel Hart was born on 5 October 1930 at 10 Duntroon Street, Glasgow to Jane Dalziel (née Steven) and Harry Leonard Hart, a bus driver. She left school at 16 to work as a histopathology technician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. She then moved to St Bartholomew's Hospital to continue her career.[3]

On 11 December 1954 she married Enriques Rosalio (Henry) Almeida (1913–1993), a Venezuelan artist with whom she had a daughter, Joyce. They moved to Canada where she worked at the Ontario Cancer Institute as an electronmicroscopist. Despite having few formal qualifications she was promoted in line with her abilities.[3] Publications credited her for her work on identifying viral structure. Her abilities were recognised by A. P. Waterson, then Professor of microbiology at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School who persuaded her to return to England to work at the hospital. She developed a method to better visualise viruses by using antibodies to aggregate them. She worked on hepatitis B and the cold virus.[4]

Almeida produced the first images of the rubella virus using immune-electronmicroscopy[5]. David Tyrrell and Almeida worked on characterising a new type of viruses now called coronaviruses.[6] This family includes the SARS virus.

Almeida followed Waterson to the Postgraduate Medical School in London where her contributions to articles were recognised by her award of a Doctorate. She finished her career at the Wellcome Institute.[4] While working for Wellcome she was named on several patents in the field of imaging viruses.[7] She left Wellcome and began to teach yoga but she returned in an advisory role in the late 1980s when she helped take novel pictures of the HIV virus.[3] She published Manual for rapid laboratory viral diagnosis in 1979.[8]

Almeida died in Bexhill from a heart attack in 2007.[4]

References

  1. ↑ The Times Published: 18 February 2008
  2. ↑ Booss, John; August, Marilyn J (2013). To catch a virus. Washington, DC: ASM Press. p. 209. ISBN 1-55581-507-3.
  3. 1 2 3 Almeida, Joyce (28 June 2008). "June Almeida (née Hart)". British Medical Journal. BMJ Group. 336 (7659): 1511. doi:10.1136/bmj.a434. ISSN 2044-6055. PMC 2440895.
  4. 1 2 3 J. E. Banatvala, ‘Almeida , June Dalziel (1930–2007)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2011 accessed 18 Oct 2012
  5. ↑ Paterson, Andrew (2017). Brilliant! Scottish inventors, innovators, scientists and engineers who changed the world. London: Austin Macauley. p. 577. ISBN 9781786294357.
  6. ↑ Booss, John; August, Marilyn J (2013). To catch a virus. Washington, DC: ASM Press. p. 217. ISBN 1-55581-507-3.
  7. ↑ Almeida, June Dalziel, patents, accessed October 2012
  8. ↑ WHO Manual for rapid laboratory viral diagnosis 1979
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