It was during these years he met (John E.) Jack Faber, who held his same interests and later became a microbiologist specializing in bacteriology, and lacrosse coach.
[1] Pretty early into his research he had achieved a thorough understanding of this group and proceeded to publish the paper Occurrence of Pythium gracile in the United States in 1927.
[3] During his tenure at Harvard, well-known botanists G. Ledyard Stebbins and Adriance S. Foster attended as graduate students.
It was during this stay that he grew fond of the genus Physoderma and began a long journey describing and studying this group.
This time in Europe provided Sparrow with his first exposure to a vast array of marine fungi and befriended a great colleague at Copenhagen, Dr. H. E. Peterson.
He taught many courses, most associated with aquatic plants and fungi, and was considered to be an amazing professor and researcher who cared a lot for his students and colleagues.
[2] In 1963, Sparrow took an emotional toll when one of his most promising students and successors to his work with chytridiacious fungi, Robert M. Johns, died tragically.
[7] His studies at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute were continued at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Marine Lab during the summers of 1968 and 1972.
[2] In 1973, Frederick Kroeber Sparrow retired and lived with his wife in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he continued to enjoy literature and science.
He exhibited that the prior methods of characterizing individuals of this genus, which were host specificity and size of resting spores, were not viable.
Sparrow's greatest contribution to mycology was likely his book titled The Aquatic Phycomycetes exclusive of the Saprolegniaceae and Pythium published in 1943.
[1] He made incredible progress regarding the discovery, classification, and ecology of many individuals in the family of the Thraustochytriaceae, containing a genus of his own naming, Thraustochytrium.
[1] Aside from his success as a researcher and professor, Frederick K Sparrow also held numerous titles and won many awards in his field.