The electrophysiologist Sergei Adamovich Kovalev (1932- ) was a prominent Russian dissident and human rights activist. After earning an international reputation for his research on the electrophysiology of myocardial tissues, Kovalev became involved with Andrei Sakharov and others in founding the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, and he was a major figure in the distribution of The Chronicle of Current Events, a samizdat news letter that became the primary uncensored source for information about the dissident movement. He was arrested by the Soviet authorities in December 1974 and sentenced to seven years in prison and three more in exile. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kovalev entered politics and won election to the Russian Duma. The Kovalev Collection consists of files of correspondence, circular letters, and miscellaneous published materials pertaining to the Soviet dissident scientist, Andrei Kovalev. The collection is arranged in two Series of approximately equal size, representing the activities of two of Kovalev's supporters: Paul F. Cranefield of Rockefeller University, who helped mobilize support for Kovalev in the United States, and Silvio Weidmann a physiologist at the University of Bern, who operated in Europe. Both Cranefield and Wiedmann were in regular contact with one another and both worked with professional organizations, with human rights groups such as Amnesty International, and with fellow activists such as Rosa Last.