Robert Almer Harper (January 21, 1862 – May 12, 1946) was an American botanist.
The younger brother of Edward Thompson Harper, Robert was born in Le Claire, Iowa to Congressional Minister Almer Harper and Eunice Thompson. The family moved to Port Byron, Illinois in 1863, where Robert attended local schools. He matriculated to Oberlin College, his father's alma mater, where he graduated with a A. B. in 1886. During the Fall of 1886 he performed graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, then he was professor of Greek and Latin at Gates College in Neligh, Nebraska during 1886–88.
In 1889–91 he was an instructor at the Lake Forest Academy. After receiving his A. M. degree from Oberlin, he was appointed professor of botany and geology in 1891–98 at Lake Forest University. During the period 1894 to 1896, took a sabbatical to attend graduate school at the University of Bonn in Germany where he studied cytology and mycology; he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1896.
Harper became Professor of Botany at the University of Wisconsin in 1898, where he taught until 1911. On June 25, 1899, he was married to Alice Jean McQueen; she died in 1909. Harper was elected to the American Philosophical Society that same year. After a stint as visiting professor at the University of California in 1911, he was named Torrey Professor of Botany at Columbia University, becoming head of the botany department. The same year, Professor Harper was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A member of the Torrey Botanical Club since 1911, he was named president during 1914–16. He served as president of the Botanical Society of America in 1916. Harper remarried in 1918 to Helen Sherman; they had one son, who became a farmer in Bedford, Virginia. Beginning in 1918, he served as head of the board of scientific directors for the New York Botanical Garden. He was named professor emeritus in 1930, then in 1938 he retired to a farm in Bedford. During his career he was awarded honorary doctorates from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Bibliography He published the following works:
Opuscula, 1895 Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Kerntheilung und Sporenbildung, 1896 Die Entwickelung des Peritheciums bei Sphaerotheca Castagnei, 1896 Ueber das Verhalten der Kerne bei der Fruchtentwickelung einiger Ascomyceten, 1896 Kerntheilung und freie Zellbildung, 1897 Cell-division in Sporangia and Asci, 1899 Cell and Nuclear division in Fuligo varians, 1900 Binucleate cells in certain Hymenomycetes, 1902 Nuclear divisions and nuclear fusion in Coloesporium sonchi-arvensis, 1903, with R. J. Holden Hamilton Greenwood Timberlake, 1904 Sexual Reproduction and the Organization of the Nucleus in Certain Mildews, 1905 Sex-determining factors in plants, 1907 The Organization of Certain Coenobic Plants, 1908 Nuclear phenomena of sexual reproduction in fungi, 1910 The structure and development of the colony in Gonium, 1912 Some current conceptions of the germ plasm, 1912 Cleavage in Didymium mclanospermum, 1914 Physical factors in cleavage of coenocytes, 1914 Starchy and sugary foods, 1914 On the nature of types in Pediastrum, 1916 Organization reproduction and inheritance in Pediastrum, 1918 The evolution of cell types and contact and pressure responses in Pediastrum, 1918 Binary fission and surface tension in the development of the colony in Volvox, 1918 The structure of protoplasm, 1919 Inheritance of sugar and starch characters in corn, 1920 The Stimulation of Research after the War, 1920 The species concept from the point of view of a morphologist, 1923 Cytology, 1924 Morphogenesis in Dictyostelium, 1926 Significance of taxonomic units and their natural basis, 1929 Morphogenesis in Polysphondylium, 1929 The nature and functions of plastids, especially elaioplasts, 1929 Organization and light relations in Polysphondylium, 1932 Plant Science in the Service of Art, 1933
References