The Faculty History Project documents faculty members who have been associated with the University of Michigan since 1837. Key in this effort is to celebrate the intellectual life of the University. This Faculty History Website is intended as a component of the effort to document the extraordinary academic achievements of Michigan’s faculty in building and sustaining one of the world’s great universities. It provides access to a comprehensive database of information concerning the thousands of faculty members who have served the University of Michigan.
Find out more.
The Bentley Historical Library serves as the official archives for the University.
Classroom Profile
The Michigan Alumnus 88
For his work on microscopic soil and water fungi, Associate Professor FRED ERICK K. SPARROW, JR., '25, has re ceived national and international honors. In 1929, after receiving his doctorate at Harvard University, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Biology at Dartmouth, where he served till 1936, at which time he was ap pointed to the University Department of Botany as an Assistant Professor.
In 1944 he was raised to an Associate Professorship, and also at this time won the Russel Award, which is given annually to a junior member of the faculty who has shown conspicuous achievement in his field. During these years he also served as a Research Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceano graphic Institution, and as a National Research Fellow in Biological Science at Cornell University, Cambridge University, and at the University of Copenhagen.
High among his profes sional honors have been invitational papers read before: VI International Congress, Amsterdam, 1935; The British Association for the Advance ment of Science, Norwich, 1935; The Linnean Society of London, 1936; and he was a Corresponding Member of the III International Congress for Micro biology, New York, 1939. He is at present Editor of the Michigan Acad emy of Science, Arts, and Letters; Secretary-Treasurer of the Mycological Society of America, and is a past Associate-Editor of the Mycologia.
His publications include 40 papers in American, British, and Danish journals on water fungi, and he is the author of "Aquatic Phycornycetes," a textbook, which has been published by the University of Michigan Press, and the Oxford University Press, London. Dr. Sparrow's research has been primarily concerned with microscopic soil and water fungi, and has been undertaken in the United States, Great Britain, Holland, and Denmark. As a result of information gained from his work in Denmark, research on marine mycology was initiated in this country at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu tion.
A member of Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity, Professor Sparrow also be longs to the New England Botanical Club, Sigma Xi, Mycological Society of America, British Mycological So ciety, Botanical Society of America, Washington Academy of Science, and the Cambridge (England) Philosophi cal Society. Married to the former Nan Gabler, '23, he has two boys. His hobbies are. music and natural history.