Paul Martin Sharp

Education Sharp was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 followed by a PhD in 1982 for research using quantitative genetics on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster supervised by Alan Robertson.

Career and research Sharp has held academic posts at Trinity College, Dublin from 1982 to 1993, He has carried out important work into the origin of HIV and its transmission from chimpanzees to humans. He also discovered that the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium, originated in gorillas.

In the eighties, Sharp collaborated with Desmond G. Higgins during the creation of CLUSTAL, a suite of multiple sequence alignment programs that have become widely used and highly influential. His research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). His former doctoral students include Kenneth H. Wolfe.

Awards and honours Sharp was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 1992, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013.

In 2024 Sharp was awarded The Darwin Medal for his work addressing the origins and evolution of HIV and the malaria parasite Plasmodium.

Personal life Sharps's entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as hill walking, pteridology and, since 1967, supporting Nottingham Forest Football Club.