A physician and naturalist, Oswald Hope Robertson worked at the Rockefeller Institute, the Peking Union Medical College, and at the medical school of University of Chicago (1927-1951). With a broad range of research interests, Robertson contributed important work on the transmission of pneumonia, the disinfection of air with glycol vapors, and later in his career, on the physiology and ecology of salmonid fishes. He is best remembered, however, as the creator of the first blood bank, established for use by British and American forces during the First World War. The Robertson Papers contain correspondence, notes, articles, and notebooks on many of Robertson's major research interests, including his work on blood. His early work on salmonid ecology is represented in a journal and eleven notebooks stemming from fieldwork in the lakes of the Wind River Range in northwestern Wyoming, 1942-1951. There is also interesting material on the Research Corporation (New York City) concerning patents on glycol vapors and air sterilizers, as well as notes and manuscripts of papers on morphine experiments, canine pneumococcus, bacteremia, and the effects of hydrocortisone.

Eugene Opie spent most of his career as a pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute engaged in research on the influenza, tuberculosis, blood diseases, poliomyelitis, and viruses. His work at Washington University, St. Louis, is documented, as are his efforts to alleviate tuberculosis in Jamaica, among Philadelphia schoolchildren, and in New York City. The Opie collection contains correspondence, notebooks, lab notes from his days at Rockefeller, articles, reprints, and photographs. Opie's long interest in China is reflected in material on the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China, the United China Relief, and Chinese medicine in general. There is also significant documentation on the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Henry Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, the Milbank Memorial Fund, and other institutions. There are also reports of approximately 300 clinical autopsies performed at the Base Hospital, Camp Pike, Ark., of soldiers who died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Also there are notes of Opie's course in pathology at the University of Pennsylvania.