Janet Parker (March 1938 – 11 September 1978) was a British medical photographer who became the last person to die from smallpox. She was exposed to the virus as a result of a laboratory accident at the University of Birmingham Medical School.[2][3] Parker was born in Birmingham, UK,[1] and worked as a medical photographer in the Anatomy Department of the University of Birmingham Medical School, where she was accidentally exposed to a strain of smallpox virus that was grown in a research laboratory on the floor below the Anatomy Department. Her death led to the suicide of the then Head of the Microbiology Department.