15 Facts About June Almeida

In 1964, Almeida was recruited by St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London.

June Almeida was born on 5 October 1930 at 10 Duntroon Street, Glasgow, to Jane Dalziel and Harry Leonard Hart, a bus driver.

In 1947, when she was 16, June Almeida attended Whitehill Secondary School where she excelled academically winning the science prize.

In 1954, June Almeida was hired for a newly opened position as electron microscopy technician at the Ontario Cancer Institute, where she worked for ten years.

In 1963, June Almeida was the first of three authors of an article in the journal Science, in which they identified virus-like particles in cancer patients' blood.

In 1966, Waterson and June Almeida collaborated with the physician and director of research on the common cold, David Tyrrell, who was working on a new organ culture system.

Three years later, in 1967, when Waterson took a position at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, June Almeida moved to begin work there.

In 1968, June Almeida published an article in Journal of General Virology, on "avian infectious bronchitis virus".

In 1966, using her new techniques, June Almeida was able to identify a group of "previously uncharacterised human respiratory viruses", while collaborating with David Tyrrell, then director of the Common Cold Research Centre in Salisbury in Wiltshire.

In 1967, using the IEM aggregation method, June Almeida produced the first visualisation of rubella virus.

June Almeida's publications include the 1979 Manual for rapid laboratory viral diagnosis for the World Health Organization.

In 1970, at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School June Almeida taught Albert Kapikian the technique of immune electron microscopy.

On 11 December 1954 June Almeida married Enrique Rosalio June Almeida, a Venezuelan artist.

In 1985, June Almeida retired to Bexhill-on-Sea with her second husband, Phillip Samuel Gardner, a fellow virologist, whom she had married in 1979.

In 2007, June Almeida died of a heart attack at Bexhill.