The Times/1930/Obituary/Bernard Barham Woodward

MR. B. B. WOODWARD

Mr. Bernard Barham Woodward, who died on Monday at the age of 77, was one of the last survivors of the British Museum Natural History staff transferred in 1881 from Bloomsbury to South Kensington.

Mr. Woodward, who then held the rank of Assistant in the Museum, became Librarian of the books transferred, and the charge of the library thus made independent involved him in a protracted period of re-arrangement, to be followed by the compilation of a general catalogue. He carried out this project with great energy and showed much skill in bibliographical research, completing the five principal volumes of the cataloge at intervals between the years 1903 to 1915, and adding a supplementary volume before he retired from the Museum at the end of 1920.

His interest in natural history was not confined to librarianship, for he conducted a number of personal researches on the borderline between zoology and geology, a subject in which his uncle, the late Dr. Henry Woodward, formerly Keeper of Geology in the British Museum, and his brother, the late H. B. Woodward, of the Geological Survey, both achieved distinction. His own work was chiefly among the mollusca, especially British mollusca, and the trustees of the British Museum published two books by him upon the British species of Pisidium and upon British freshwater mollusca respectively. A more popular work on the life of mollusca came from his pen shortly before the War. Mr. Woodward's services to science were recognized by his election as a Fellow of the Linnean Geological, and Royal Microscopical Societies, and he was for some years president of the Malacological Society. He was twice married, losing his second wife some years ago, and leaves no family.