BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 



Joseph Barcroft was born on 26 July 1872, at the Glen, Newry, 

 Co. Down, N. Ireland. He came of a Northern Ireland Quaker family 

 and was the second of the five children of Henry Barcroft, D.L. and 

 Anna Barcroft. He was educated at the Friends School at Bootham, 

 York, and the Leys School, Cambridge. In his last school year he 

 passed the London B.Sc. Examination. He went up to King's College, 

 Cambridge in 1893 and took a First Class in the Natural Sciences 

 Tripos Part I in 1 896, and again a First Class in Part II in Physiology 

 in 1897. 



In 1899 he won the Walsingham Gold Medal for research in 

 Physiology and a Prize Fellowship at King's College. Shortly after- 

 wards he was appointed to a Lectureship in Natural Sciences at that 

 College, and in 1904 to a University Demonstratorship in Physiology. 

 In 1910 he was elected F.R.S. and between this year and 1914 took part 

 in, or led several high altitude expeditions. During World War I he 

 was head of the Physiological Branch of the Chemical Warfare Service 

 at Porton, and was awarded the C.B.E. He returned to Cambridge 

 after World War I, first as Reader in Physiology, and then, six years 

 later on the death of Professor Langley, he succeeded to the Chair of 

 Physiology at Cambridge, which he held till he retired in 1937 under 

 the age rule. During this period he was knighted and received many 

 academic honours. Earlier in the inter-war period he had held the 

 chairmanship of the Medical Research Council committee on 

 haemoglobin, the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology at the Royal 

 Institution, and had led an Anglo-American High Altitude Expedition 

 to the Andes (1922). He also visited America on several occasions to 

 deliver lectures sponsored by distinguished foundations or to receive 

 other academic honours. 



He continued in active research at Cambridge after retirement from 

 his Chair until the outbreak of World War II, when he was promptly 

 called back to his old service at Porton, with which indeed he had 

 maintained active contact between the wars. Fortunately gas warfare 

 did not materialize in World War II, so he returned in 1941 to the 

 Cambridge Physiological Laboratory as head of the Agricultural 

 Research Council Unit in Animal Physiology. During this period he 

 was also deeply concerned with food and nutrition problems, being 

 President of the Nutrition Society for several years. In 1943 he was 

 awarded the Copley medal, which is the highest research honour in 

 the gift of the Royal Society. After World War II he resumed active 

 research on foetal physiology and on haemoglobin in which he had 



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