Barbara E. Murray M.D.

1947 - 2024

Barbara E. Murray, M.D.
06/21/1947 - 04/11/2024
It is with great sorrow that we announce the death of Barbara E. Murray, M.D., faculty member and former director of the division of infectious diseases at UTHealth, a formidable Texan, and an icon in the field of infectious diseases. She was born in Jackson, Miss., to Grover and Nancy Setzer Murray. She was 76 years old. Barbara is survived by her devoted husband, Ernesto "Ernie" Baca. They were together for 44 years. She is also survived by her stepmother, Sally Murray and Sally's sister, Carolyn Sowell; her cousin, Lucy Murray Howell; her niece, Marla Poag; her nephew, Graham Poag and wife, Melissa and their sons, Nathan, Caleb and Micah. She was predeceased by her sister, Martha Murray Poag; her husband, Dr. C. Wylie Poag; and their daughter, Tracy Poag.
As a child, Barbara experienced the effect of infectious disease firsthand. At the age of four, she was hospitalized for polio. She grew up in an academic environment watching her father, Dr. Grover E. Murray, work as a geology professor at LSU, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and later as President of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas. Barbara graduated cum laude with a degree in mathematics in 1969, from Rice University in Houston, Texas. She attended medical school at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, graduating first in her class (Ho Din Award) in 1973. As a medical student, she traveled to Costa Rica, Guatemala and Colombia, where she saw that clinicians spent a considerable amount of their time treating transmissible diseases. She then spent six years training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass., followed by six months in Thailand conducting research at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences.
Dr. Murray joined the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, at UTHealth as an Assistant Professor in 1980. She was Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases for 25 years (1995-2020). She was named to the J. Ralph Meadows Professorship in Internal Medicine in 2003. During her time at UTHealth, she was heavily involved in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research resulting in almost 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals, as well as countless reviews and editorials. She was the world's definitive expert on enterococci and Staphylococcus aureus. In 2015, she was honored as a Rice Distinguished Alumna for her many accomplishments.
Outside of UTHealth Dr. Murray served on numerous NIH and FDA advisory committees. She served as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, to the European Food Safety Authority and to the EU's Innovative Medicine's Initiative. She was very active in professional societies including: the American Society of Microbiology (ASM); editor for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal; the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID); and President and Foundation President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). In 2017, she received the IDSA Alexander Fleming Award for lifetime achievement.
Aside from her impressive academic career and her innumerable contributions to science, Barbara was an avid exercise enthusiast. She and Ernie loved to ski and run. In addition to running two marathons and 10 half-marathons, she was an accomplished skier. Barbara encouraged all who knew her to exercise and maintain exemplary physical fitness. She loved animals and travel, having visited about 65 countries. She had good command of Spanish, and also spoke some Thai and Portuguese.
Barbara Murray passed away peacefully on April 11, 2024. She was the definition of a trailblazer. She was an amazing, kind, and generous mentor to countless generations of microbiologists and infectious diseases physicians, as well as anyone else who crossed her path. Her academic curiosity, her sense for justice, her quest for adventure, and her legacy, will live on through the lives and careers of all her trainees, colleagues, and friends. Barbara will be immensely missed by all who knew her.
Details about a celebration of her life will be forthcoming. To honor her illustrious career, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has established the Barbara E. Murray, M.D., Distinguished Professorship in Internal Medicine Research.