Rodman A. Sharp

Born February 16, 1930,

He was president and CEO of three successful high-technology start-ups: Sharp Laboratories - radioactivity measuring systems for medical research; Oceonographic Engineering - undersea vision and robotics for oceanographers and the offshore oil industry; and Computer Peripherals - very large computer disk drives for on-line banking and airline reservation systems.

He was co-founder of Amtech Corporation which invented and became the world leader in electronic identification technology for the tagging of rail cars, ocean containers and motor vehicles. Working with the same group of managers and investors, Rod was also a founder of Blockbuster Corporation. Other technologies he worked with were clinical diagnostics, medical imaging, surgical tools, lasers for making flat panel displays, new kinds of optical glass, telescopes for astronomers, water purification, pet thermometers, geothermally heated fish farming and radio controlled toys.

His parents Marie Horning Sharp and Alton B. Sharp, reared him in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and he attended Milton Academy. Rod got an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard in 1951; when he couldn't get into anywhere else with that experimental degree, he continued his studies at Harvard, winding up with the first and (after they looked at his dissertation) the last diploma Harvard has granted in Nuclear Chemistry. Before entering private industry with General Atomic in San Diego, he did basic research in high energy nuclear reactions at Brookhaven National Laboratory following a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship with the Central European Nuclear Research Agency (CERN).