The Queen's College Record 2020

Obituaries
physician other doctors would consult about medical problems suffered by themselves
or members of their families. He became a national leader in postgraduate medical
education. From 1980 to 1994, he was Editor of the Postgraduate Medical Journal
which he transformed into a viable and successful clinical educational journal to rival
the best. Barry was Director of the Academic Centre for Postgraduate Medicine at
the Whittington Hospital from 1975 to 1981. In this capacity he helped countless
junior doctors succeed in passing challenging postgraduate medical examination. He
published numerous scientific papers, reviews and chapters in textbooks based on his
research into hypertension and renal diseases.
Barry was also an Honorary Physician to the Royal Northern Hospital, St John and
St Elizabeth Hospital and the Italian Hospital. This last appointment led him to learn
Italian so that he could converse with his patients there. He held a number of other key
positions in the medical world. He was Honorary Secretary, Honorary Librarian and
Vice-President of the Royal Society of Medicine and President of its Clinical Section,
on the Council and an Examiner for the Royal College of Physicians, and Editor of the
Journal of the Apothecary Society. He served as President of the Harveian Society of
London and of the London Jewish Medical Society.
After his retirement in 1999, Barry became a Governor of the Whittington Hospital.
He also developed the talent he had already shown at Bradford Grammar School,
becoming an accomplished artist. He showed at exhibitions and sold many of his
paintings, the proceeds going to one of his favourite charities. Barry also took a
serious interest in art history and developed an ability to spot previously unnoticed
medical features in well-known works of art. He contributed a number of articles and
gave invited lectures about his findings.
Barry was an unusually kind, compassionate doctor with reassuring reliability not
only for his patients but also for family and friends. He combined his wide range of
interests and achievements with an infectious and irreverent sense of humour. He was
wonderful company. My greatest honour has been to be known throughout my life,
as at Queen’s, as Barry’s brother. In 1960, Barry married Marina, a fellow student at
University College Hospital, London, who became a psychiatrist. He was devoted to
his wife and their three children, Sara, Julia and Rachel. Barry is survived by Marina,
his children and seven grandchildren.
Victor Hoffbrand (Physiological Sciences, 1953)
128 The Queen’s College | College Record 2020