Max Barrett

Arthur Max Barrett, MD (28 July 1909 – 11 December 1961) was a British morbid anatomist and histologist at the University of Cambridge, and an honorary consulting pathologist to the United Cambridge Hospitals and to the East Anglian Regional Hospital Board. He wrote numerous works, often cited in medical literature. The Barrett Room at Addenbrooke's Hospital is named in his honour, as is a prize for the undergraduate Part II Pathology Tripos at the University of Cambridge. He was the father of Syd Barrett, a founder member of the band Pink Floyd.

Biography

Early life

Arthur Max Barrett was born in 1909 in the English town of Thaxted, in Essex to Arthur Samuel Barrett, a grocer and draper, and Alice Mary, daughter of Rev. Charles Ashford, Congregational minister at Thaxted for 19 years, and Ellen, née Garrett, who according to family tradition was a cousin of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, although research on Syd Barrett's genealogy has not found any relation.

Max Barrett had a religious family background and was educated first at the grammar school of Newport, Essex (now Newport Free Grammar School). When the family had moved to Cambridge he attended the Cambridge and County High School (now Cambridgeshire High School for Boys). Early he was interested in scouting (with the Cambridge County School Troop he became troop leader and gained a King's Scout Badge) as well as in music, aural birding and botany, which improved the expeditions with his sister Doreen for birds and flowers, and inspired his later interests in music and science.

He worked in the wards and laboratories of the London Hospital from 1934 to 1938 and was University Demonstrator in Cambridge from 1938 to 1946, the only one in the Department of Pathology during the war years, having a large part of the teaching responsibility. He was also an examiner for the Institute of Medical and Laboratory Technology, London.

When he returned to Cambridge in 1938 other than teaching he was in the same time actively interested both in the routine pathology services of Addenbrooke's Hospital, and as member of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society as well, where he was Honorary Secretary for more than 20 years, and where "an enviably deep bass" was remembered among his musical abilities. In 1946, when that services were saddled to the university, he became consultant for the hospital as University Morbid Anatomist and Histologist. He often made histological examinations of the field fungi he carefully preserved and recorded for his collection, and gave some valued opinions on rare fungi during Autumn field meetings of the British Mycological Society. Later a venue in a private ward at the Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, used for seminars, training, meeting, consulting and conferences, was named Barrett Room in his honour.