Anthony Epstein, a British pathologist whose chance attendance at a lecture on childhood tumors in Africa began years of scientific sleuthing that, with his colleague Yvonne Barr, led to the discovery of the virus known now as Epstein-Barr, and opened expansive research into its links to cancers and other ailments, died on Feb. 6 at his home in London. He was 102.

Dr. Epstein’s work in the 1960s to isolate the virus — a type of herpes — set the foundation for sweeping studies into viral and biological triggers for cancers, such as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple sclerosis, lupus and, most recently, so-called long covid.

In 1991, at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, England, Dr. Epstein was discussing the events leading to the Epstein-Barr discovery with Dr. Denis Burkitt, who had discovered a mysterious tumor in African children and had delivered the lecture that had so intrigued Dr. Epstein. “It was a series of accidents, really,” Dr. Epstein said. “Lucky quirks.”

“But you have to have two things,” said Dr. Burkitt. “You have to have the accidents, and you have to have the mind that can interpret them and look behind them and see their meaning.”