Robert Almer Harper

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.