The papers include miscellaneous letters, letterbooks, books, certificates, and diplomas of various members of the Muhlenberg family. Among them are photostats of letters and papers of General John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and officers of the Continental Army on military affairs in the Southern Department during the American Revolution (1772-1804); photostats of letters to Albert Gallatin, Nathanael Greene, Edward Hand, Winthrop Sargent, Baron von Steuben, William Alexander, and George Washington; photostat of General Muhlenberg's journal of trips to the Ohio (1784, 1797); photostats of letters and notes of Gotthilf H. E. Muhlenberg, including a diary kept at Halle (1771) and extracts of thirty letters to Stephen Elliott of Beaufort and Charleston, South Carolina (1808-1815); photostats of letters of Henry A. Muhlenberg about his biography of General Muhlenberg (1848-1849); and photostats of letters of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711-1787). Also included is an original letterbook of Peter Muhlenberg, paymaster of the United States Army, kept at Augusta and Savannah, Georgia (1836-1842). Henry Muhlenberg's notebooks (1784-1813), written in Latin or German script, in a small hand, includes a wealth of botanical observations, with a focus on Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Henry Muhlenberg journals are a record of daily occurrences, with many features of a commonplace book, containing prescriptions, notes of questions asked candidates for the Lutheran ministry, and the plan of a barn. There is also a biographical account of Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711-1787).

Raymond Pearl spent the majority of his academic career (1918-1940) at Johns Hopkins University, where he was Professor of Biometry and Vital Statistics and Director of the Institute of Biological Research. Founder of the Quarterly Review of Biology and Human Biology, he made significant contributions in the areas of biology, genetics, eugenics, and statistics. The Pearl Papers includes correspondence as well as notebooks, scrapbooks, diplomas, photographs, and 33 volumes of diaries. There is significant correspondence with his wife, Maud (ca. 500 letters), and mother, Ida May (ca. 300 letters), particularly for the years 1895-1934. Of special note is Pearl's correspondence with his friend, colleague, and fellow Baltimoreian, H. L. Mencken (ca. 500 letters). The collection contains important information on the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, The Baltimore Sun, the Birth Control Federation of America, Dartmouth College, the International Institute of Statistics, Johns Hopkins University, and the National Academy of Sciences. This note is currently under review for revision.

William Jacob Robbins (1890-1978, APS 1941) was a botanist and physiologist. From 1937 to 1957 he was director of the New York Botanical Garden. His research focused on culture methods of plants in relation to biochemistry and nutrition, especially on the synthetic abilities of fungi. His studies paralleled the scientific agenda of the Rockefeller Foundation, an agency with which he was closely associated for years as adviser and trustee. He was perhaps the most influential botanist in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) during the early postwar era, and a principal participant in the plans for the global reconstruction of science. Robbins served as president of the American Philosophical Society from 1956 to 1959.

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.

Ernst Krackowizer (1821-1875), father-in-law to the anthropologist Franz Boas (APS 1903), was an Austrian born surgeon who fled Vienna to New York following his involvement as captain of the Academic Legion during the Revolution of 1848. Krackowizer was an active member of New York medical community, helping to found the German Dispensary and Hospital, later renamed Lenox Hill Hospital. During the Civil War, Krackowizer assisted the Union Army as a volunteer surgeon and inspector of military hospitals. Krackowizer is claimed to have been the first on whom the anesthetic effects of chloroform were tested in Vienna and the first to use a laryngoscope in the United States. This collection is comprised of the personal papers of Ernst Krackowizer including diplomas, certificates, correspondence, diaries, and photographs, which document his life and medical career. Krackowizer's experience in the Revolution of 1848 and subsequent flight from Vienna trough Germany to the United States is well detailed in his correspondence to his fiancée and later wife, Emilie Forster, and in his diaries, which make up a significant portion of this collection. Krackowizer firsthand description of the early use of chloroform and the laryngoscope are included, as well as materials documenting his involvement as a volunteer surgeon and hospital inspector during the Civil War. Additionally, the Krackowizer Papers contain material written by others reference the life and work of Ernst Krackowizer.

One of the oldest houses in Philadelphia, Wyck is now a non-profit museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nine generations of the Jansen-Wistar-Haines family owned the Wyck property from 1690 until 1973. The last family owner deeded 2.5 acres of land, the house and its contents, several outbuildings, a landscaped garden, and a small endowment to the Wyck Charitable Trust. The Wyck Charitable Trust and the Wyck Association now administer the preservation of the property and its educational services to the public. This collection contains diaries, letters, accounts, bills and receipts, deeds, and photographs. The collection as a whole is deepest for the period 1770-1970. Items of particular note include accounts of household expenses at Wyck from ca. 1790-1970; papers pertaining to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Quaker schools, and social reform groups; agricultural and horticultural practices; and correspondence to and from cultural leaders of 18th and 19th century Philadelphia. The papers of the John S. Haines family (Ms. Coll. 52A) form part of the Wyck Papers. The papers cover the years 1845 to 1949 and are arranged into eight series.

A physician, natural historian, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815) was one of the central figures in Philadelphia's early national scientific establishment. Having received his medical training in European universities, Barton was appointed Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1789, lecturing on botany, materia medica, natural history. A prolific author, he established his reputation as one of the nation's preeminent botanists through his botanical text book The Elements of Botany (1803), but his contribtions to zoology, ethnology, and medicine were equally noteworthy. Barton's monograph on the "fascinating faculty" of the rattlesnake and his efforts in historical linguistics (New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, 1798) were widely read, and his Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (1804-1809) was one of the nation's first medical journals and an important outlet for natural historical research. The Barton Papers offer a comprehensive view of the professional work of Benjamin Smith Barton from the time of his return to the United States in 1789 until his death. The collection is divided into five series: Correspondence, Subject Files, Bound Volumes, Graphic Materials, and Printing Plates. The collection includes a particularly valuable series of botanical, medical, and natural historical drawings collected by Barton for research, reference, and publication. Among the many artists represented are William Bartram, Frederick Pursh, Pierre Turpin, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

The Franz Boas Personal and Professional Papers contain a diverse assemblage of professional correspondence, family letters, and diaries, with a valuable series of essays and lectures by Boas on both professional and political topics (democracy, race, etc.). (NOTE: This collection is not to be confused with the much larger Franz Boas Papers collection (Mss.B.B61), which contains the vast majority of Boas's professional correspondence and was referred to as the "Professional Papers" in earlier decades.) During the half century leading up to the Second World War, Franz Boas helped to define academic anthropology in the United States. Trained as a geographer at the University of Heidelberg, Boas worked initially on the Inuit of Baffin Island and subsequently on the cultures of the Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, becoming a leading figure in American anthropology by the first decade of the twentieth century. As Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Boas made significant theoretical contributions to ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology, helping to ingrain the four fields approach in his discipline and introducing the concept of cultural relativism into wide currency. He was, as well, a committed Socialist and an ardent opponent of both racism and fascism.

After a brief career in the Congregational church, J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903) left the ministry in 1852 to work full-time as a geologist. Having gained experience in structural geology and stratigraphy with the First Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1836-1842), Lesley became an expert in the geology of coal, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad and other corporations and conducting some of the first systematic studies of the state's hydrocarbon resources. A long-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he was elected to the APS in 1856, serving variously as its librarian, secretary, and vice president, and he was selected as Director of the Second Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1875-1889). The Lesley Papers include letters to and from Peter Lesley and his wife, Susan on geology, coal and iron mining, abolition, educational reform, organized charity, and Unitarianism. The collection offers important insight into academic and applied geology in late 19th century Pennsylvania, the development of the coal and iron industries, as well as into the Lesleys' progressive social and intellectual milieu. It is divided into three series: Lesley's general correspondence, his correspondence with his brother Joseph, and microfilms of Lesley's research notes.