Donald J.S. Barr

September 18, 1937 – November 20, 2018

Written by Jim Ginns, January 27, 2019.
Donald Barr died suddenly at home in Yetminister, England, United Kingdom. He had been President of the Mycological Society of America in 1990-1991. His Presidential address is the lead article in Mycologia’s volume 84. Concurrently he was President of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistologists (1989-1991).

Born in England Don immigrated to Canada in 1954 and studied plant pathology at McGill University’s Macdonald College. Having been awarded BSc and Msc degrees, he then enrolled in the doctoral program at University of Western Ontario to study under C.J. Hickman. In 1965 he was awarded a PhD degree and accepted a position as Research Scientist within the Canada Department of Agriculture, Ottawa, Ontario (currently Agriculture and Agri-food Canada). Don spent the next 30 years at the research center in Ottawa investigating the ecology and phylogenetics of zoosporic fungi, as well as techniques to study them.