Frederick Henry Osborn was an administrator, humanist, and scientist. This collection includes letters, diaries, reports, speeches, drafts of articles and books, oral history interviews, and photographs. There are diaries and letters for his service in Europe with the American Red Cross during World War I. There are some letters and documents, such as patent applications and plans for inventions, from his "business career" period prior to 1928, after which he became a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History studying anthropology and population. This study led to his later important contributions to the redirection of eugenics study in the U.S. and the reorganization of the American Eugenics Society. His other related organizational work and publications relating to human and population genetics are also documented in this collection. There is significant material (letters, diaries, reports) related to Osborn's World War II contributions as the chairman of the Civilian Committee on Selective Service in 1940, and as head of the Morale Branch of the U.S. Army (later, the Information and Education Division of Special Services) in 1941. Also included are important documents, especially his diary, from his work as deputy representative on the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the U.N. Commission for Conventional Armaments. His letters, writings, and speeches relating to foreign policy are extensive, spanning the period from the 1940s until his death, much of it from the Vietnam War years. The correspondence with Kathleen Harris is particularly rich in this respect. There is family correspondence reflecting his dynamic philosophy of life, with long series of letters to his parents (1917-1945) and to his children and grandchildren. His later civic and regional interests, as a long-time resident of Garrison, N.Y., are evidenced in the work he did on the Palisades Interstate Park Commission.

Thomas F. Anderson (1911-1991) was a biophysicist and electron microscopist whose research included Raman spectroscopy; the physiology of yeast; the biological effects of radiation; the biological applications of electron microscopy; and the genetics of bacteria, bacterial viruses, and bacteriophage. He was a Professor of Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Member of the Institute for Cancer Research in Fox Chase.

Ernst Wolfgang Caspari was an important contributor to behavior and developmental genetics, working primarily on the mealmoth Ephestia. Trained in Alfred Kuhn's laboratory at the University of Göttingen (1933-1935), Caspari was forced from his position by the Nazis in 1933, escaping to the United States five years later. As a professor of biology at Lafayette College, Wesleyan University, and the University of Rochester, Caspari continued his research on Ephestia, mouse genetics, and behavior genetics until his retirement in 1975. The Caspari Papers includes correspondence, papers, grant reports, and lectures relating to Caspari's genetic research dating primarily from the period after his departure from Germany. In addition to substantial material on behavior genetics and human evolution, the collection includes correspondence relating to Caspari's editorial work for Advances in Genetics, and his involvement with the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Fifth Banff Conference on Theoretical Psychology, Genetics Society of America, International Conference on the Unity of Science, Social Science Research Council, Committee on Genetics and Behavior, and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.