A physicist and social activist, Edward G. Ramberg contributed to the early development of electron microscopy and color television, and devoted much of his life to pacifist and Quaker causes. Born in Italy to an American mother and German father, Ramberg experienced the losses of war firsthand during the First World War when his father was killed while serving with the German army. After moving to the United States with his mother, Ramberg attended Reed College and Cornell University before returning to Germany for postdoctoral study under Arnold Sommerfeld. Employed at RCA for most of his career (1935-1972), Ramberg refused any involvement in military or war-related research, and as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, was assigned to duty in Civilian Public Service camps. He continued to work in fostering social harmony until late in life. With his wife, Sarah Sargent, a Swarthmore graduate whom he met through the American Friends Service Committee, Ramberg helped to establish Bryn Gweled, a cooperative community in which people of various religious, social, and racial backgrounds lived and worked together. The bulk of the Ramberg papers consists of files pertaining to his work with Amnesty International, the American Friends Service Committee, and peace groups in the Philadelphia and Bucks County region. Of particular note is a bundle of correspondence with Sommerfeld.

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.

The James V. Neel Papers document nearly every phase of the career of one of the founders of human population genetics in the United States. Neel was particularly thorough and organized, and retained virtually all of his significant scientific correspondence, committee reports, minutes of meetings, and drafts of manuscripts. The collection also includes data collected during Neel's work among the Xavante, Yanomanö and other indigenous populations. In a career that spanned the period from the late work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and Charles B. Davenport to the contemporary world of molecular genetics and nucleic acids, Neel knew, worked with, and corresponded with many of the most influential 20th century practitioners of genetics. The collection begins in earnest in 1943, after Neel had decided to focus on human genetics. Neel's work with Drosophila and none of his Drosophila manuscripts are found in the collection.