Michael A Epstein

Sir Michael Anthony Epstein, CBE, FRS, FMedSci (born 18 May 1921) is a British pathologist and academic. He is one of the discoverers of the Epstein-Barr virus, along with Yvonne Barr and Bert Achong

Epstein was educated at St. Paul's School (London) in London, Trinity College, Cambridge and Middlesex Hospital Medical School. Epstein was Professor of Pathology, 1968–85 (now Professor Emeritus), and Head of Department, 1968–82 at the University of Bristol. In 1979 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and was its Vice-President from 1986 to 1991. He was awarded its Royal Medal in 1992. He was awarded the CBE in 1985 and knighted in 1991. Epstein was a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford from 1986 until 2001, and has been an Honorary Fellow since 2001. He became a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998. In 2006, Epstein was awarded a D.Sc. from Bristol. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He is Jewish.

Epstein was the first person to propose that Burkitt's Lymphoma was a cancer caused by a virus. Upon hearing a lecture given by Denis Parsons Burkitt in 1961 about this newly described cancer, Epstein changed his research focus from cancer causing viruses in chickens to searching for a viral origin of Burkitt's Lymphoma. After more than two years of working with tumour cells from Burkitt's patients and subsequently working to isolate a virus from them, the Epstein–Barr virus was finally discovered in February 1964.