Robert A. Harper

Robert Almer Harper. [Born] 1862. Botanist, teacher.

It is hard for the layman to realize the distance that biological science has travelled since 1894, when Harper took his meager savings as a mid-western college teacher and went to Bonn to work with the great Strasburger. The conception of genetics then had not yet taken form and the world of biology was wondering if the phenomenon of sexuality was a universal thing. Harper’s publications on the cytology and morphogenesis of the lower types of plants thenceforth were milestones in the progress of genetic knowledge.

Lest anyone think this fairly unimportant business for the human race, let him heed the words of Simon Flexner, “No essential biological division exists between man and the lower animals and plants, whether in respect to health or disease.

Harper had been a teacher of Latin and Greek before he became a botanist and his scientific papers were beautiful to read in their precision and lucidity.

He was tall and broadshouldered; and he had a smile that was irresistible and a way of looking at men that made them conscious of a presence, a great presence, yet a friendly presence. So he was in the Century until he retired, from Columbia University, to his farm in Virginia; and there the irises this botanist planted grow along the path from his house to the churchyard where he lies.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

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Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1946 Memorials