John Walker Sharpe was born in Stenhousemuir in Falkirk, Scotland on the 21st October 1916. He was a student at the University of Glasgow from 1935-1939 , gaining a First class MA degree in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1939. The collection has 43 of his lecture notebooks from his time at the university. He then spent a short time as Assistant Lecturer in Natural Philosophy at the Royal College of Science and Technology (now the University of Strathclyde ).
He spent most of World War II as a scientific officer in the Admiralty, and two of his notebooks from this period are included in the collection. He did important work first on mine design, and subsequently on the demagnetising of ships to prevent them detonating magnetic mines (degaussing).
After the war he spent 2 years at Aberdeen as a lecturer in R V Jones' physics department. This was followed by two years with ICI at Runcorn, where he did pioneering work on Electron Microscopy, and was the first to photograph African Trypanosoma, a virus causing sleeping sickness in African cattle. The rest of his career was spent in the Natural Philosophy Department of the Strathclyde University, where he eventually became Reader. He died on 14 August 1997.
From the guide to the Papers of John W Sharpe, 1916-1997, arts graduate, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, 1935-1940, (Glasgow University Archive Services)
