Barbara Jill Weir was born on 17 January 1942 in Upper Bentley, Worcestershire to Patricia Florence Singleton Weir, a cook and housekeeper. She was educated at the County High School for Girls in Loughton, Essex before going to Girton College in 1961 to study Natural Sciences. She obtained Cambridge University Blues in cricket, hockey and swimming during her years at Girton. Barbara began postgraduate studies at the Marshall Laboratory in Cambridge in 1964, working with Sir Alan Parkes’ colony of chinchilla and other hystricomorph rodents. This group of animals was to become her dominant interest in mammalian reproduction. In 1965 the colony and Barbara moved to the Wellcome Institute of Comparative Physiology at London zoo under the supervision of her PhD supervisor, Idwal Rowlands. She was awarded a PhD by Cambridge University in 1968 for her dissertation ‘Some aspects of reproduction in hystricomorph rodents’. Barbara Weir undertook expeditions to South America in the late 1960s and early 1970s to collect some of the lesser known hystricomorphs in Argentina, Bolivia and Peru: much of her work on these animals was presented in conferences and written up in scientific papers. Barbara was a prolific writer and was published in many books and journals, especially the Journal of Reproduction & Fertility. She became Assistant Editor of the Journal in 1973 and was then its Editor from 1976 until 1991, when she took early retirement. Barbara Weir died on 22 December 1993. She was a generous benefactor to Girton College in her will. [Information drawn from the Girton College Register and from obituaries written by Idwal Rowlands.]