Frederick Kroeber Sparrow, Professor of Botany and Director of the University's Biological Station at Douglas Lake, has retired after thirty seven years of dedicated service to the University.

Dr. Sparrow was born in Washington, D.C., and earned his bachelor's degree at The University of Michigan in 1925. He pursued his graduate studies at Harvard, receiving his master's degree in 1926 and his doctorate in 1929.

Prior to joining the faculty of the University as an assistant professor in 1936, Dr. Sparrow held teaching positions at Harvard University, Radcliffe College, Cold Spring Harbor Biological Station, and Dartmouth College. He also held National Research Council fellowships in biological sciences at Cornell University, Cambridge University, and the University of Copenhagen, and served as a research fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

In 1943-44 Professor Sparrow was a research associate at the Michigan State College Experimental Station and also worked as a collaborator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Plant Industry in the Division of Cotton and Other Fiber Crops and Diseases, and in 1949 as an investigator at the Harvard-Atkins Gardens, Soledad, Cuba. He returned to Cambridge in 1956 as a guest lecturer, was named the annual lecturer of the Mycological Society of America in 1958, became a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1965-66, and a visiting professor at the University of Washington in the summer of 1968.

The foregoing recital gives one some inkling of the stature of this man. Add to it the fact that his colleagues made him the recipient of the University's Henry Russel Award in 1944, that he has had numerous honors and held offices in several professional organizations, that his students have consistently evaluated him as a superior teacher, and it becomes readily apparent that this University has indeed benefited from the labors of one of the world's most renowned scholars and teachers.

Dr. Sparrow was promoted to Associate Professor of Botany at the University in 1944 and to Professor in 1949. In 1967 he was named Acting Director of the Biological Station, and became Director the following year. Acknowledged as one of America's leading authorities on aquatic Phycomycetes, he has been universally acclaimed for his research and writings, both of which have been prolific.

Seldom have the Regents honored so worthy a teacher, scholar, and administrator as they do in naming Dr. Sparrow Professor Emeritus of Botany and Director Emeritus of the Biological Station.