Person

Barrett, James W. (James William), Sir, 1862-1945

1862-1945

Sir James William Barrett was born on February 27, 1862, in South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

He was an Australian ophthalmologist, academic administrator, and author. He was educated at the University of Melbourne (M.B., 1881; Ch.B., 1882) where he became the first secretary of the Medical Students' Society in 1880. In 1890, he founded the Australian Medical Journal in Melbourne. He worked for two years as a resident medical officer at the Melbourne Hospital where he became a strong advocate of antisepsis.

In 1883, he went to King’s College in London (M.R.C.S., 1884; F.R.C.S., 1887) where his professor G. F. Yeo remarked on his earnestness, quickness, assiduity, urbanity, and courtesy. Sir Barrett taught at King's College, Moorfields Ophthalmic Hospital and elsewhere, gaining his main source of income from coaching in physiology for F.R.C.S. examinations.
He visited Austria and Germany and developed a lifelong affection for German language, literature and music, together with an attachment to the scientific rationality and agnosticism of Thomas Huxley. He researched the anatomy of the mammalian eye, published seventeen papers, and decided to spend his life in London on investigative work, but in 1886, he was called back to Australia for family reasons.

He served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1931 to 1934, and then as Chancellor from 1935 to 1939. He was President of the British Medical Association from 1935 to 1936, and the inaugural president of the Victorian Town Planning and Parks Association, now the Town and Country Planning Association. He was a notable supporter of Jewish refugee migration to Australia by persons fleeing Nazism.

In 1888, he married Marian Rennick (1861–1939) and in 1940, he remarried Monica Ernestine Heinze (1889–1950). He died on April 6, 1945, in Toorak, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barrett-sir-james-william-64