Mary Barber (3 April 1911 – 11 September 1965) was a British pathologist and bacteriologist who studied antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
In 1938, she moved to the Archway Group Laboratory, where she was an assistant pathologist until 1939; that year, she took the same position at Hill End and the City Hospitals, St. Albans.
in 1940, Barber became a lecturer of bacteriology and assistant pathologist at the British Postgraduate Medical School and Hammersmith Hospital, positions she held until 1948.
In 1958, she returned to the British Postgraduate Medical School to be a reader in clinical bacteriology; in 1963, she became a professor, a position she held until 1965.
[6] She found that this was because bacteria with mutations that caused them to synthesize a penicillin-destroying enzyme were selected during treatment with antibiotics, leading to rapid spread of a single antibiotic-resistant strain throughout the hospital.
[2] Between 1948 and 1958, her focus shifted to cross-infection by Staphylococcus in hospitals,[1] which she found to be caused by penicillin-resistant bacteria and the nurses became nasal carriers soon after working on the wards.
[2] After her successful publications, Barber was hired by the Medical Research Council to study semisynthetic penicillin, cephalosporin, fucidin, lincomycin, and pristinamycin.