Quarterback and captain-elect Sharp catches a pass for the 1933 Big T.

Robert Phillip Sharp
1911 – 2004

Robert P. Sharp, the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology, Emeritus, died peacefully at his home in Santa Barbara on May 25. He was 92.

The eldest son of Oxnard fruit growers Julian and Alice Sharp, he came to Caltech in 1930 with vague thoughts of becoming a civil engineer, but changed his mind when he took the core geology course in his sophomore year. “I had hardly ever heard the word geology before that time,” he later recalled, “but this course hit me just right. Bingo! So I elected to give geology a try.” He wasn’t sure, though, that he would be able to make a living from it.

Sharp played quarterback for the Caltech football team for three years, thrilled to be able to compete against teams like UCLA at the Coliseum (Caltech didn’t win, but gave UCLA a good run for their money) and to have the Rose Bowl as home field. When a 1958 issue of Sports Illustrated named him one of 25 “Men of Achievement” who had been undergraduate football stars, he told the reporter, “I think most young scientists need what you get from football—the news that you have got to be determined as hell and that there is a certain poise and aggressiveness that is desirable.” He remained physically active all his life, jogging, hiking (preferably to a mountain stream for some trout fishing), and skiing (which he took up at 55).

After a BS in 1934 and an MS in 1935, he moved to Harvard for a doctorate in geology (1938), and found the going easier than the other grad students after “being worked like a dog” at Caltech. While there, he met and married another geologist, Radcliffe graduate student Jean Todd, and they were together for 62 years until Jean’s death in 2000. After five years in the geology department of the University of Illinois, he was called to wartime service with the U.S. Army Air Forces from ’43 to ’45, working in the Arctic, Desert, and Tropic Information Center and rising to the rank of captain. After two years on the faculty of the University of Minnesota, he came back to Caltech in 1947 as a professor of geomorphology and was appointed division chair in 1952, after the untimely death of Professor of Paleontology Chester Stock. He was chair of the Division of Geological Sciences, as it was then called, until 1968, during which time he introduced several new, and groundbreaking, academic programs. (He can also be credited with putting the P into GPS, though the official name change to the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences didn’t happen until 1971.)

“The most important thing he did was to hire real talent in the new areas of geochemistry, planetary sciences, and geophysics,” said Lee Silver (PhD ’55), Keck Foundation Professor for Resource Geology, Emeritus. “He knew that bringing in chemists and physicists and blending them into the division would make a very rich and productive assembly of faculty, and it quickly became a multidisciplinary division.”

“All three of these areas were very mathematical,” added Bruce Murray, professor of planetary science and geology, emeritus. “Sharp was not a quantitative man, yet his foresight and ability to push this through were extraordinary.”

Unable to find a vertebrate paleontologist to succeed Stock, Sharp decided to give this area of research a lower priority. “Bob sold all the division’s vertebrate fossils to the L. A. County Museum of Natural History,” recalled Silver, “and used the $100,000 raised to build geochemistry labs. It was the first geology department in the world to go in that direction.”

“It was a radical change,” said Murray. The skepticism it generated came as a shock to Sharp, who later recalled, “I would go to national geo-logical meetings and geologists would come up and hiss in my face, ‘How’s the depart-ment of geochemistry at Caltech?’ I used to say, ‘Just be patient and give us time.’”

Of course, he turned out to be right, said Silver. Bringing in geochemists Harrison Brown, Clair Patterson, and Sam Epstein made Caltech the wellspring for the use
of isotopes in geology.

To modernize seismology, Sharp recruited geophysicist Frank Press in 1955 and raised the money to move the seismological laboratory from a cramped house in the San Rafael hills to a beautiful mansion on the other side of the road. Later, he used all his persuasive powers to bring the seismo lab downhill onto the campus.

Sharp didn’t need to persuade the astronomers to let the geology division move into the field of planetary science in 1963. They were making great discoveries on the new Hale telescope at Palomar, and were quite happy to leave the planets to the geologists. Bruce Murray became Caltech’s first faculty member in planetary science (he would later become director of JPL). Murray became, like so many others in the division, a close personal friend, and Sharp was best man at his wedding. Andrew Ingersoll, the Anthony Professor of Planetary Science, who arrived in 1966, still remembers Sharp’s welcome: “He said to me ‘My job is to give you every opportunity to be as productive as you can,’ and I thought, ‘Wow! What a great place to come to.’ He was a great leader, and supportive of everyone in the division.”

The 1965 Mariner IV flyby of Mars gave Sharp the chance to do planetary science as well. Mariner IV was the first spacecraft to carry a digital TV camera, built by physics professor Robert Leighton (BS ’41, MS ’44, PhD ’47) and Murray. They brought in Sharp to help them interpret, “for thousands of home TV viewers” as E&S wrote at the time, the first-ever close-up images of the red planet beamed back to Earth. The trio also worked on Mariners VI, VII, and IX, and “had a ball.” In a 1991 Pasadena Star-News article, Sharp recalled how one of the Mariner technicians had told him that the latest images from Mars revealed the presence of a lake. Looking at the images, he saw that the rippling features the technician had seen were actually sand dunes. “That was the beauty of it for me,” he said. “Astrophysicists, engineers, and computer guys, and they need this dumb ol’, dirty fingernail geologist like me!”

As well as running the division, teaching, and fund-raising, Sharp found time for “creative, original research,” said Silver. “He was one of the most highly respected geologists in the world.” His work included investigations of basin and range structure, continental basin deposits, mountain and continental glaciation, glacial-lake shore-lines, frozen ground, erosion surfaces, desert sand dunes, oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in snow and glacier ice, surface forms and processes on Mars, and even the mysterious sliding stones of Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa. He preferred “today’s geology,” things that could be measured, like glaciation and sand dunes. This was a smart combination, remarked Silver, because he could study glaciers in winter and sand dunes closer to home in summer.

Jean joined Bob on the third Grand Canyon trip to raise money for the division’s first endowed chair.

Sharp’s scientific contributions garnered many honors, including the Geological Society of America’s Kirk Bryan Award in 1964 and its highest honor, the Penrose Medal, in 1979. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, and awarded America’s highest scientific honor, the National Medal of Science, in 1989. He donated the medal to the division, and it is now on display in the Robert P. Sharp lecture theater.

Sharp’s take on teaching made him very popular with students: “I try to tell them something about the environment that creates interest,” he told the Claremont Courier in 1989. “We don’t teach right when we give students a mass of facts and tell them that they may need them later. What we should do is create the interest and then make them do the nasty intellectual exercises later.” After just three years at Caltech, he was hailed by Life magazine as one of the 10 great U.S. college teachers of 1950. “Sharp’s enthusiasm is contagious, and his sophomore geology course is one of the favorites on the Caltech schedule,” Life wrote, “credited with attracting many unsuspecting students into the lifetime study of geology.”

Bill Tivol (BS ’62), who today manages the electron microscopy facility in the Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, recalls that when he took the Ge 1 “culture course,” Sharp made a bet with the class that if there was a volcanic eruption that year, the students were to buy him a beer, and, if not, he’d buy a beer for each of them. “Not only did he win the bet—and get presented with a beer in class—but he continued to win every year since,” said Tivol. “This was his very memorable way to point out that something we think of as rare is really quite a common geological event, globally.”

Sharp’s former students may also remember their teacher’s penchant for punctuality. In a 1973 issue of Caltech News, one of them observed, “When he says a caravan will leave the campus for a field trip at 8 a.m., he means 8:00 and not 8:05. He’s been known to drive out of the parking lot and leave stragglers standing on the steps.” On one memorable occasion, he even set off without a trustee.

In 1978, he became the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology. The division’s first endowed chair, it was funded in a very imaginative way. Delayed at an airport in Houston by engine trouble, Lee Silver and Gene Shoemaker (BS ’47, MS ’48) came up with the idea of taking Caltech benefactors on guided raft trips through the Grand Canyon at $50,000 a head ($75,000 for a couple) until they’d raised the necessary $1 million. The idea was enthusiastically embraced by division chair Barclay Kamb (BS ’52, PhD ’56, the Rawn Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Emeritus) and Sharp, and the four of them led these popular trips (with suitably luxurious campsites and meals) for the next three years. President Marvin Goldberger and his wife, Mildred, went along on the third expedition, and one evening toward the end of the trip, Goldberger announced that all the money had been raised and the new chair would be named in Sharp’s honor. Dumbstruck at the time, Sharp later recalled: “It was a beautiful place for the announcement. Right on the river. Beautiful evening. In camp. And a satellite went over.” He always felt it was one of the nicest things that ever happened to him.

Sharp loved taking people on field trips, feeling that “you have to bring them into the fold by taking them out to have a look at nature.” He felt sorry for the division’s secretaries and lab technicians because they were always left behind when the faculty and students went off. So in a gesture typical of his consideration for others, he organized and led an annual staff geological excursion. Every year for seven years he took the division staff on day trips to the San Gabriels, or two-day trips to Owens Valley, and sometimes even three-day trips to Hawaii.

He also started the popular Alumni Association travel program. Arlana Silver, who currently heads the Caltech Associates and worked with Sharp on these programs for many years as associate and then deputy director of the Alumni Association, recalled that he took alumni to places such as Alaska, Hawaii, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and the American Southwest until he was well into his eighties. “Other faculty members have joined in with their own trips now,” she said, “but Bob was the one who set the pattern. He had a great rapport with the alumni, and the people who traveled with him once wanted to travel with him again. In fact, so many people wanted to go on each trip that they were commonly wait-listed, and the trips had to be repeated.”

Project Pahoehoe, an eight-day spring break to Hawaii for the division’s graduating seniors and doctoral candidates, was another of his innovations. It wasn’t the traditional kind of spring break on the beach, however. Sharp wanted the students to learn about hot-spot volcanism, and he worked them hard. The project had to be funded from year to year by donations, and he put a lot of effort into raising the money. To ensure it could continue after his death, he established an endowment with his own pledge and those of others. He and his wife, Jean, also gifted a partial remainder interest in their Santa Barbara home to the Institute.

Sharp became a professor emeritus in 1979 but continued to teach a class at Caltech—staying in touch with young people was what kept him going, he said—and to lead field trips. He also wrote popular geology books, including Geology: Field Guide to Southern California and his humor-tinged collection of vignettes on sites of geological interest, Geology Underfoot in Southern California and Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley (both written with Allen Glazner). The latter two are now in their fourth printing, and have a wide and appreciative readership. He had almost finished another Geology Underfoot book on Idaho, which will be completed by its two coauthors.

Sharp is survived by two children, Kristin Lytle and Bruce Sharp, two grandchildren, Lenore and Mathew Lytle, and many generations of fond students and colleagues. A memorial service is planned for the fall.

Those wishing to make a contribution to Caltech in his memory should write to Robert P. Sharp Ventures in Earth Sciences Fund, GPS Division, attention Marcia Hudson, Mail Code 170-25, Pasadena, CA 91125, making checks payable to Caltech with a notation earmarking the gift for the memorial fund. —BE