Aaron John Sharp was an American botanist, bryologist, educator and writer. He was particularly interested in mosses.
Background
Aaron John Sharp was born on July 29, 1904, in Plain City, Ohio, United States, to Prentice Daniel Sharp and Maude Katharine (Herriott) Sharp. He grew up on his parents' dairy farm near East Liberty and credited his early love of plants and nature to his mother.
Education
Sharp gained his bachelor's degree in botany from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1927. Two years later he was awarded his Master of Science degree from the University of Oklahoma for completing a thesis on the bryoflora of Eastern Oklahoma. Summer courses at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Station and at Yale's Osborn Botanical Laboratory furthered his education in bryology, and after enrolling at Ohio State University, Sharp completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1938 with a dissertation entitled Taxonomic and Ecologic Studies of Eastern Tennessee Bryophytes. In 1952 Sharp became a Doctor of Science at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Sharp began his teaching career at the University of Tennessee in 1929 and remained at the school until he retired in 1974. In addition to teaching at that institution, he served as curator of its herbarium from 1949 to 1968 and headed the botany department for ten years beginning in 1951. Sharp also found time to teach at other schools, including the University of West Virginia, the Cranbrook Institute of Science, Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Montana, among others. During his career, Sharp also worked as a consultant to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), National Geographic, Time-Life Books, and Encyclopedia Britannica, and he served with the Nature Conservancy on its board of governors.
Sharp's numerous collection trips took him around the world: to Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Finland, Tanzania, India, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan, where he developed both herbarium exchange programs and personal ties with many international botanists. Such efforts helped build the university's bryophyte and vascular herbarium to over 500,000 specimens. He theorized that plate tectonics (folds and faults in a planet’s crust) played a key role in the occurrence of various mosses worldwide.
Sharp's research interests produced 175 botanical publications, of which 125 dealt with bryophytes. He wrote numerous books on the subject of botany, including Relationships between the Floras of California and the Southeast of the United States, Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers, and Moss Flora of Mexico - the result of many collecting trips to Mexico and work spanning 48 years. In an effort to keep the price low on his Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers book he refused to accept any royalties for the work.
Sharp married Cora Evelyn Bunch on July 25, 1929. The couple produced 5 children - Rosa Elizabeth, Maude Katharine, Mary Martha (deceased), Fred Prentice and Jennie Lou.