In 1931, the Nautilus, an O-12 class submarine, was fitted out to undertake an expedition to gather meteorological and oceanographical information while venturing beneath polar ice floes to the north pole. Although the crew did gather some useful information, the expedition was fated to suffer delays, accidents, and perhaps even sabotage. Although mechanical problems ruined any hope of reaching the pole, by late August, 1931, the Nautilus had maneuvered to the edge of the Arctic ice cap and was able to dive beneath a few floes. On its return, however, damage from storms and engine failure led the crew to scuttle the ship a few miles off the coast of Bergen, Norway. The Nautilus Collection is comprised of approximately 60 photographs, plus assorted newspaper clippings, postcards, and a few other miscellaneous items. The photographs document the voyage of the Nautilus from Camden, New Jersey, to the Brooklyn Naval Yard, and New London, Connecticut, across the Atlantic to the Arctic regions. The collection includes formal and informal photographs of the submarine, its interior, and ice floes, along with portraits of many of the ship's officers.

This journal was kept aboard the Brig Advance during the 2nd Grinnell Expedition.

This concerns the partial "revolt" of men under Elisha Kent Kane's command during the second Grinnell expedition.

A companion volume of albumen prints taken by William Bradford and other members of the "Panther", in Greenland, in the summer of 1869. This voyage is described in Hayes, I. I. The Land of Desolation; William Bradford was the Captain of the Panther.

One of Philadelphia's most recognized geographers at the turn of the twentieth century, Henry Grier Bryant (1859-1932) was an explorer, traveler, and writer known for an avid interest in the arctic. His financial independence enabled Bryant to devote his life to expanding geographic knowledge, as an officer of the Geographic Society of Philadelphia and Alpine Club of America, and as an explorer and traveler to Labrador, Greenland, the Canadian Rockies, South America, and southern and southeast Asia. The Bryant Letterbooks include an important slice of outgoing correspondence from the geographer and explorer, Henry G. Bryant, documenting his interest in geography and exploration. The four volumes consist of letterpress copies of outgoing correspondence (1884-1890, 1899-1902, 1902-1903, and 1913-1918) concerning personal and financial matters as well as business conducted as an officer of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia and Alpine Club of America. The collection also includes three folders of correspondence addressed to Bryant, 1886-1911, mostly pertaining to the Alpine Club.

This diverse collection includes correspondence, field notes, lecture and meeting notes, publication material, drawings, and lantern slides. It documents Weber's professional career as an internationally known myrmecologist, or ant scientist, and his wider ranging interests in entomology and ecology. There are class and lab notes for his educational period at Harvard University (A.M. 1933; Ph.D. 1935), and substantial documentation on his primary academic career at Swarthmore College (1947-1974; includes teaching records, data on the Biology Dept. and the College). His field notes, 1930s-1970s (ca. 3 lin. ft.), contain detailed observations of the many scientific expeditions he was a member of, including trips to: West Indies, 1933-1936; Colombia, 1938; Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya, 1939. He also participated in numerous American Museum of Natural History expeditions: Central Africa, 1948; Middle East, 1950, 1952; and Tropical America, 1954. There are data for his time as visiting professor at the University of Baghdad, Iraq, 1950-1952, and his period as Scientific Attaché, Buenos Aires, for the U. S. Dept. of State, 1960-1962. Weber's contributions to polar scientific studies can be studied through his files of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Polar Research, 1958-1960 (he was on the panel on biological and medical science), as well as many numerous miscellaneous files on polar research. There is substantial material on the Entomological Society of America, and on such local ecological groups as the Chester-Ridley-Crum Watersheds Assoc., Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

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.

A product of the distinctive culture of reform in antebellum Philadelphia, William Parker Foulke was the scion of the old elite who put a conservative stamp on social change. Trained as an attorney, Foulke spent much of his adult life engaging his deep amateur interest in natural history and mental philosophy and devoting himself to a variety of civic and philanthropic causes, including the colonization of formerly enslaved persons, penal reform, and cultural institutions in his native Philadelphia. The Foulke Papers are the product of the diverse social and intellectual interests of the Philadelphia attorney and philanthropist William Parker Foulke. Consisting primarily of correspondence, notes, and essays, the collection touches on Foulke's many interests. The collection includes numerous lectures delivered by Foulke along with material on the Lancaster County Prison, New York Prison Association, and the Philadelphia Society For Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons; notebooks concerning prisons and prisoners, including a 1846-1852 diary, and a listing of prisoners, their race, age, crime, sentence, and observations; a diary concerning the American Colonization Society (1852); a copy of an arctic diary (1853-1854) by John Wall Wilson, in the hand of Isaac Israel Hayes, which recounts much of the journey aboard the brig Advance, commanded by Elisha Kent Kane. There is also a list of buildings (1820-1841) designed by John Haviland, and material on the American Academy of Music, Philadelphia.

The most stellar member of a stellar family, Elisha Kent Kane was among the most popular American explorers of the mid-nineteenth century, a hero in the tragic mode. Born in Philadelphia in 1820, the son of John Kintzing Kane and Jane Duval Leiper, Kane studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania before earning a commission as a naval surgeon. While in the Navy, Kane embarked on the succession of voyages to exotic locales that became the basis for his extraordinary fame. In 1843, he attended Caleb Cushing's first diplomatic mission to China as ship's physician, and subsequently traveled to the Philippines and Western Africa. Distinguishing himself in the Mexican War, Kane's greatest fame came from two expeditions to the arctic, aiming to locate the lost explorer, Sir John Franklin and to explore for evidence of the open polar sea. Kane died in 1857 while attempting to organize a third arctic voyage. Part of the Kane Family Collection, the Papers of Elisha Kent Kane contain a mix of personal and family correspondence with correspondence relating to all of Kane's explorations. Intelligent, articulate and very much a romantic, Kane's letters are expressive and passionate. The collection provides fine documentation of youth, his relationship with the Spiritualist Margaret Fox, and of course his travels to China and off the coast of Africa in 1846. Kane's two expeditions to the arctic are particularly well documented, with correspondence, notes, logbooks, diaries, and sketches, as well as Kane's post-expedition notes, writings, and lectures recounting his experiences.