He attended high school in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he became acquainted with mycologist Herbert Hice Whetzel, then a student at Wabash College, who stimulated his interest in mycology.
In 1905, he entered Wabash College, where Professor Mason B. Thomas, a great teacher of botany, would further influence Fitzpatrick to study mycology.
He was immediately appointed Assistant Professor by Whetzel in the recently organized Department of Plant Pathology at Cornell, and began the work of teaching mycology to which he devoted the remainder of his life.
He published biographies of mycologists George Francis Atkinson, Curtis Gates Lloyd, Fred Carleton Stewart, and Herbert Hice Whetzel.
[4] In 1996, The Mycological Society of America established a Mentor Student Travel Award in honor of Harry Morton Fitzpatrick.