Robert Almer Harper (1862 - 1946)
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Biography
Sources
Selected publications
Biography
1862 January 21, born at Le Claire, Iowa
1886 earned A.B. from Oberlin College, teaches Greek and Latin at Neligh, Nebraska
earns M.A. from Oberlin, teaches science at Lake Forest Academy in Illinois
1891 appointed professor of botany at Lake Forest College
1894 - 1896 sabbatical from Lake Forest College to pursue post-graduate work in Germany; studies with Strasburger Brefeld
1898 appointed professor and head of botany at University of Wisconsin
1899 marries Alice Jean McQueen
1909 wife Alice dies
1911 appointed head of botany department at Columbia University
1918 marries Helen Sherman
1930 retires from Columbia
1946 May 12, dies at his farm house at Bedford, Virginia
Apparently he started out (in Europe) at Strasburger's lab in Bonn, then went to work with Brefeld. But he found Brefeld too domineering and went back to Bonn, where he made a special study of the nucleus, contributing much basic knowledge about its behavior during the formation of ascospores. He went on to explore spore development in Mucor and Pilobilus. He had great trouble making sense of the Myxomycetes, which were much too confusing; and also with modern genetics, which he found too mechanistic.
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Sources
Harry Baker Humphrey (1961) Makers of North American Botany
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Selected Publications
Robert Almer Harper (1896) "Über das Verhalten der Kerne bei der Fruchtenwicklung einiger Ascomyceten" (On the behavior of the nucleus during the reproductive development of some ascomycetes) in Jahrbuch für wissenschaftliche Botanik (Yearbook for Scientific Botany) 29 pp. 655 - 685
Robert Almer Harper (1896) "Die Entwickelung des Peritheciums bei Sphaerotheca Castagnei" (The development of the perithecium in Sphaerotheca castagnei) in Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft (Reports of the German Botanical Association) 13:10 pp. 475 - 481I also have a reference to this where the date is 1895
Robert Almer Harper (1896) "Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Kerntheilung und Sporenbildung im Ascus" (Contribution towards the understanding of the interior and the spore-generation of the ascus) in Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft (Reports of the German Botanical Association) 13 pp. 67 - 78
Robert Almer Harper (1898) "Nuclear phenomena in certain stages in the development of the smuts" in Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 12 pp. 475 - 498
Robert Almer Harper (1900) "Sexual reproduction in Pyronema confluens and the morphology of the ascocarp" in Annals of Botany 14:55 pp. 321 - 400
Robert Almer Harper (1902) "Binucleate cells in certain Hymenomycetes" in Botanical Gazette 33:1 pp. 1 - 25
Robert Almer Harper (1905) "Sexual reproduction and the organization of the nucleus in certain mildews" in Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 37 pp. 1 - 104
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