This correspondence is primarily with George W. Corner, Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society, concerning Whipple's membership in and contributions to the Magellanic Committee of the APS. This committee awards a medal for the best discovery in navigation, astronomy, or natural philosophy.

The Corner collection includes correspondence, biographical and research data, lectures, publications, notebooks and drawings, and also photographs. He was both a scientist, specializing in mammalian reproduction and the female reproduction cycle (being a co-discoverer of the hormone progesterone along with Willard M. Allen), and a medical historian writing both biography and institutional history.