Here’s the story of June Almeida — the woman who discovered the first coronavirus

As this global pandemic rages on, let’s take a look back on the life of Scottish virologist Dr. June Almeida who discovered the first coronavirus in 1964.

Early life

Almeida was born in Glasgow in 1930 as June Hart, BBC reported. She was the daughter of a bus driver and left formal schooling at age 16 before getting a job as a histopathology laboratory technician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

Histopathy is the study and diagnosis of tissue diseases and involves examining cells and tissue under a microscope, according to the Royal College of Pathologists.

Almeida ultimately moved to London to advance her career where she married Enriques Almeida, a Venezuelan artist, in 1954, The Herald in Scotland reported. After giving birth to her daughter Joyce, Almeida and her family moved to Toronto, Canada, where she worked at Ontario Cancer Institute as an electron microscopist.

An unlikely career

In Canada, it was easier to gain scientific recognition without a degree than in England and Almeida was frequently promoted despite her lack of formal training, according to an article published in the BMJ medical journal.

There, she co-authored a number of studies pertaining to the structures of viruses and whether they could be visualized under a microscope, according to the BMJ.

Almeida was eventually wooed back to London in 1964 by A.P. Waterson, a professor at St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. Three years later, the pair would move their work to the Royal Post Graduate Medical School.

By that point, she’d been awarded a doctorate of science for her publications, the BMJ reported.

Almeida was the first to visualize the rubella virus thanks to immune electron microscopy, a method she pioneered which “made it possible for viruses to be seen clumped by antibody.”

The method also led Almeida to discover that the hepatitis B virus has two components, one on the particle’s surface and one internally, according to the BMJ.

Current hepatitis B vaccines stimulate the antibodies on the surface of the particle, which are the ones that protect against infection.

Discovering the coronavirus

After returning to London, Almeida collaborated with Dr. D. A. J. Tyrrell, a common cold researcher, who had been studying nasal washings, BBC reported. From these washings, Tyrrell’s team had found that they could grow some viruses associated with the common cold, but not all of them.

One such sample that could not be grown was taken from a boarding school student and known as B814, according to BBC.

Eventually Tyrrell and his team found that they could grow the virus in organ cultures and sent one to Almeida. She put the specimens under the microscope and saw particles which she described as being similar to influenza specimens, but not the same, BBC reported.

The specimen would become known as the first human coronavirus. The discovery was published in the British Medical Journal (now the BMJ) in 1965, BBC reported. The first photos of the coronavirus were published two years later in the Journal of General Virology.

Coronaviruses are a type of virus and get their name from the crown-like spikes on their surfaces, according for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Coronaviruses are broken into four main sub-groupings: alpha, beta, gamma and delta.

There are seven coronaviruses known to infect humans, including MERS, SARS and SARS-CoV-2 (known as COVID-19).

Almeida died in December 2007 at age 77, the Herald reported. But thirteen years after her death, her work is helping researchers fight the novel coronavirus.

This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 10:46 AM with the headline "Here’s the story of June Almeida — the woman who discovered the first coronavirus."