One of the principle figures of turn of the century anti-Darwinian evolutionism, William Bateson (1861-1926) was a professor at Cambridge University for 23 years before leaving to become first director of the John Innes Horticultural Institute (1910-1926). Developing a unique "vibratory theory" of organismal variability during the 1890s that envisioned evolutionary change as a discontinuous process, Bateson became well known as the first English advocate of the recently rediscovered theories of Gregor Mendel. For a man inclined to drama and disputation in science, it was Bateson's family life that took on the airs of Greek tragedy. The two linear feet of correspondence, diaries, and photographs that comprise the Bateson Family Papers provide valuable insight into the social milieu of the Batesons and their decidedly unorthodox upper middle class academic life, as well as their responses to the tragic deaths of two of their sons.

Selected by William Coleman, this collection contains correspondence from William Bateson to his wife, Catharine, and to his colleagues, such as Francis Galton, E. Roy Lankester, Alfred Newton, and Charles Scott Sherrington; lectures given between 1897-1904; and some genealogical and miscellaneous material. This note is currently under review for revision.

The geneticist Milislav Demerec emigrated from Yugloslavia in 1919, spending nearly his entire career in the Department of Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Working initially on the genetics of maize and later on Drosophila virilis, his research interests included radiation and chemical mutagenesis, and during the Second World War, penicillin and the genetics of antibiotic resistance. Demerec served as head of the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor from 1941 until 1960. The Demerec collection contains the extant professional papers of Milislav Demerec, dating primarily from the time of his arrival at Cold Spring Harbor until his retirement. In addition to his correspondence with colleagues, the collection includes interesting material on the administration of Cold Spring Harbor laboratory during the 1940s and 1950s, data and research notes, material relating to professional organizations (e.g. Genetics Society of America, American Society of Naturalists), a lengthy series of lectures given by Demerec, and a large number of photographs pertaining to Demerec's research, but also to his colleagues and Cold Spring Harbor itself. There is also a Register of visitors to the laboratory (1927-1945) and a Milislav Demerec reprint list.