My colleague James Barnett, who has died aged 91, was a scientist passionately devoted to the study of yeasts, the microscopic fungi at the heart of the production of wine, bread and beer. He seamlessly wove his career with his pastime over more than 70 years, beginning his laboratory-based research in yeast taxonomy and nutrition in 1953 at Cambridge University in the Low Temperature Station for Research in Biochemistry and Biophysics. He later moved to the Institute of Food Research in Norwich.
Although an assiduous and meticulous experimentalist, he made his lasting mark in work of a more scholarly nature. With Roger Payne and David Yarrow, he authored an immensely useful laboratory handbook, Yeasts: Characteristics and Identification (1983), for which his wife, Linda Martin, whom he met in Cambridge, took most of the micrographs. Now in its third edition, and found on the laboratory benches of yeast scientists throughout the world, it describes how to identify 963 species of yeast, and what is known of their properties, many of which were independently checked by James.
The importance of this handbook is that it compiled for the first time what have become the standard tests for distinguishing and identifying the different yeasts, achieving the aim of James’s oft repeated explanation to his fellow scientists that he wanted to “do something useful”.
Aged 75, and an honorary member of faculty at the University of East Anglia, he embarked on another major project, in which he explored the history of research on yeasts. Initially published in the journal Yeast, the 14 essays appeared in a single volume, Yeast Research: A Historical Overview (2011). Eloquent, immensely readable and accurate, they revealed the foundations of the modern disciplines of microbiology and biochemistry, as well as both the insights and foibles of scientists from Antoine Lavoisier in the late 18th century, to those of recent times.
Anxious to avoid the errors of others, James consulted all the original publications he cited, many of which had to be translated from the original French and German. Thus he was able to quote accurately from the pioneering scientists, and reveal both their triumphs and their mistakes.
James was born in Shephall, Hertfordshire, the younger son of Anthony Barnett, an import and export merchant, and his wife, Frances. He was educated at Froebel educational institute and St Paul’s school, London, and at King’s College London. James and Linda made their home in Cambridge, and, from 1966, in Norwich.
A daughter, Marion, predeceased him. James is survived by Linda, his daughters, Penelope, Annabel and Chloë, and six grandchildren.
