Sir Michael Anthony Epstein CBE FRS FMedSci (18 May 1921 – 6 February 2024) was a British pathologist and academic.
[23] In a tribute to Epstein in his 100th year, the European Association for Haematopathology noted that his "perseverance, rigorous scientific observations and a bit of serendipity" resulted in the first cell culture in suspension from human lymphocytes.
In 1963, a flight from Uganda was supposed to deliver fresh tumour samples into a foggy London.
However, under the microscope the cloudiness was not due to bacteria, as originally thought, but to huge numbers of viable, free-floating lymphoma cells.
In 1964, using electron microscopy, Anthony Epstein and his research assistant Bert Achong discovered viral particles in EB cells, resulting in the seminal paper published in 1964, "Virus particles in cultured lymphoblasts from Burkitt's lymphoma" by Epstein, Achong and Barr.