This collection includes correspondence, lectures, notebooks, reports, photographs, and maps. There is much in Russell's papers concerning the Department of Geography at L.S.U., as well as faculty and research concerns and other needs of the university.

Simon Flexner, born in 1863, one of the nation's leading experts in pathology and bacteriology, was most renowned for his research on cerebrospinal meningitis, polio and infantile paralysis. Arguably though, Flexner's stewardship of the Rockefeller Institute was his greatest contribution to medical and scientific research. His rise in the medical community began in the late nineteenth century in Louisville, Kentucky, where despite not having completed even the seventh grade, Flexner taught himself basic bacteriology by conducting experiments at home using a microscope borrowed from the pharmacy where he served as an apprentice. Granted a medical degree from the University of Louisville School of Medicine in 1889, he went on to a pathology fellowship at the newly opened John Hopkins School of Medicine. Within two short years of leaving Louisville, Flexner received an assistant of pathology appointment at Johns Hopkins. It was a quick ascent and the beginning of a long and brilliant career that included a prestigious appointment at the University of Pennsylvania and then a directorship at the new Rockefeller Institute where he realized his lifelong dream of creating a dynamic and productive research laboratory. The Rockefeller Institute became instantly famous worldwide as the preeminent research facility for virology and under Flexner's direction produced invaluable contributions in pathology, bacteriology, and immunology. This collection does not reflect the early phases of Flexner's career at Johns Hopkins but does document an early interest in meningitis and other infectious diseases with science-related correspondence, laboratory notebooks, and administrative correspondence with the New York City and State Departments of Health. There is abundant material on Flexner's directorship of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, including Flexner's search for staff, an involved process which is detailed in correspondence with the scientists, many of whom became quite famous. Also included is material relating to the other institutions and Rockefeller philanthropies with which Flexner was involved. (Among the most significant correspondence, however, may be that which documents the support of the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation in the development and subsequent reorganization of medical schools following brother Abraham Flexner's scathing report on medical education in the United States and Canada). This collection would be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of bacteriology, histology, and immunology or the general history of modern medicine and philanthropy.

Victor George Heiser, who was a preeminent public health physician, created a rich archive of material documenting all phases of his career, especially the international health work of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1915-1934. There are voluminous, detailed, and interesting diaries for the whole course of his adult life (1890-1972). There are notebooks reflecting on his early training and work (1890-1907), and lectures he attended at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia (1897).

Robert Cushman Murphy (1887-1973), one of the twentieth century's great ornithologists, was curator of mammals and birds at the Brooklyn Museum (1911-1917) and was curator of birds and later chairman of birds at the American Museum of Natural History (1917-1973). The world's foremost authority on sea birds, in 1936, he penned Oceanic Birds of South America, a two volume set. An ardent traveler and explorer, he kept copious notes of his travels, which he typed up, illustrated and had bound. The APS library owns forty-two bound journals. Murphy was made an APS member in 1946. A pioneer in the study of the ecology, a louse, fish, plant, lizard, an Antarctic inlet, spider, and two mountains have acquired his name. This collection contains diaries, journals, articles, addresses and observations of Murph;, generously illustrated with newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, sketches, maps, and charts.