David Sharp (18 October 1840 – 27 August 1922) was an English physician and entomologist who worked mainly on beetles. He was among the most prolific publishers in the history of entomology with more than 250 papers that included seven major revisions and reviews and a highly influential work on the structure and modifications of the male genital structures of beetles. He edited The Zoological Record for three decades.
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Biography
David Sharp was born at Towcester and lived his early years in Stony Stratford. Some twelve years later his parents moved to London, where he received most of his education. After attending one or two preparatory schools, in 1853 he entered St. John's Foundation School which was then at Kilburn. At the age of seventeen he commenced to help his father, a leather merchant, and about the same time he began collecting beetles, some of his favourite haunts being Ken Wood and Hammersmith Marshes, as well as the sandy shores about Deal and Dover. Lacking an interest in business life, he choose to pursue a career in medicine. He accordingly, after studying for two years at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, went to the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Medicine in 1866. After graduation he assisted a friend with his practice in London for a year or two. He had at first some thought of seeking an appointment in connection with entomology at the British Museum, but abandoned the idea; and about ten years later he went so far as to apply for the post of Curator of the City of Glasgow Industrial Museum, being recommended by H.W. Bates and Frederick Smith amongst others. After his short residence in London he was offered a post as medical officer in the Crichton Asylum at Dumfries, which led to his taking charge of a case at Thornhill in the neighbourhood, where he joined the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Scientific, Natural History, and Antiquarian Society upon its reconstruction in 1876. This engagement gave him the leisure he desired for prosecuting the studies on which his heart was set, and it was during this period that he published some of his earlier papers. It was also here that his marriage took place. In 1883, upon the death of a wealthy patient, William Cunninghame Graham Bontine (1825-1883), to whom he served as a special medical attendant, he returned to England. Bontine had been injured on the head by an Irishman during the Irish famine. The injury led to serious mental issues and the patient was declared "insane" and admitted to the Crichton Royal Institution. Sharp initially went to live at Southampton, but, finding it too far from London, after about two years he removed to Dartford. In 1885 he was invited to go to Cambridge as Curator of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology. There he spent the next nineteen years of his life, till in 1909, when he retired to Brockenhurst, where he had built a residence, Lawnside, on the very edge of the New Forest, facing the extensive heath of Black Knowl where he resided till his death on 27 August 1922.