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Robert C. Barnard ’35

Robert C. Barnard ’35, August 30, 2003, in Silver Spring, Maryland, from pneumonia. Robert received a bachelor’s degree from Reed in political science, and then attended Columbia Law School. He entered Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1936, receiving a BA in jurisprudence in 1938, and a BCL in 1939; each with first class honors. At Oxford he served as president of the university’s law society. Robert was awarded a Sterling Fellowship at Yale in 1939–40, and that same year joined the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. He later worked as special assistant to the attorney general, and was chief legal consultant in the office of the assistant solicitor general. In 1947, Robert joined the Washington, D.C., law office of Cleary and Gottlieb, then opened and managed the firm’s Paris office in 1949. In 1951 he returned to the Washington practice, where he worked for 50 years. Robert was counsel to the American Industrial Health Council and the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, and participated in regulatory proceedings at OSHA, the EPA, and the FDA involving issues of chronic health hazards and their regulation. He wrote articles on the role of science in risk assessment and addressed scientific and other audiences on issues relating to the need for sound science in identifying and controlling chronic health hazards. He and Helen Beatrice Hurd ’34 were married for 63 years, and they had two children. His sister, Marjorie H. Barnard ’39, also graduated from Reed. "Reed provided an intellectual awakening and an introduction to a body of essential information. The importance and excitement of that experience I feel still today," he wrote in 1993. Robert is survived by his wife, his son and daughter, two grandchildren, and a sister.

Appeared in Reed magazine: November 2003

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