Filmed from a portion of the Cattell family correspondence at the Library of Congress.

This small but important collection of correspondence relates to the formation of the Committee on Research in the Native American Languages, its grants, and its publications. Presented by Waldo G. Leland, 1956.

Papers consist of letters, reports, addresses and lectures, relating to biological chemistry and other scientific topics, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, refugee scientists, professional associations, etc.

Material collected by Muriel Rukeyser in the late 1940s and 1950s for a proposed biography of Franz Boas, including original manuscript materials of Boas, correspondence between Boas and Rukeyser, biographical data, early family letters and documents relating to him, school and military records, family reminiscences of Boas, and some professional correspondence. There is also material specifically related to the publication of Rukeyser's biography, including notes, a synopsis of the book, and correspondence with publishers and funding agencies. There are also some of Boas' and others' publications.

This collection is primarily correspondence and also notes on experiments concerning the cytology research of Lewis and his wife, Dr. Margaret Reed Lewis, at Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and finally at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. There is significant material relating to his professional society activity in the American Association of Anatomists (President, 1934-1936) and the International Society for Experimental Cytology.

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. This collection includes correspondence that Boas carried on with his colleagues in anthropology, as well as with those in the other social sciences and sciences. This correspondence is rich as a source for twentieth-century historians interested in "radical" social causes, since Boas was a socialist and an outspoken voice for progressive social causes.

This is a diverse collection, including correspondence, drafts of letters, notes and notebooks (on biometric methods; tables and formulae; science, nature and method; coefficient and correlation; vitalism; Japanese language); commonplace book (1924); autobiography; and over one hundred folders of unpublished writings. The correspondence and other material covers a variety of topics, including biology, eugenics, evolution and natural selection, human heredity, paramecia, protozoa genetics, U.S. immigration policy. There is much on the Seventh International Congress of Zoology (1907); letters to his father and wives, and from students and colleagues on his seventy-fifth birthday, 1943 (1 v.); diplomas and certificates of membership; and photographs.

William Jacob Robbins (1890-1978, APS 1941) was a botanist and physiologist. From 1937 to 1957 he was director of the New York Botanical Garden. His research focused on culture methods of plants in relation to biochemistry and nutrition, especially on the synthetic abilities of fungi. His studies paralleled the scientific agenda of the Rockefeller Foundation, an agency with which he was closely associated for years as adviser and trustee. He was perhaps the most influential botanist in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) during the early postwar era, and a principal participant in the plans for the global reconstruction of science. Robbins served as president of the American Philosophical Society from 1956 to 1959.

For his pioneering research on the link between viruses and cancer, the pathologist Francis Peyton Rous was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1966. Working primarily at the Rockefeller Institute after 1909, Rous first came to notice for his theoretical construction of the first blood bank for use in France during World War I, a plan ultimately implemented by his assistant, Oswald H. Robertson. Subsequently, he left an important imprint on the development of experimental medicine, partly through his own research on the origins of cancer and his administrative activities at the Rockefeller, but also as editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine from 1921-1970. The Rous Papers include correspondence, lectures, articles, reports, laboratory records, reprints, and photographs that document all aspects of the life and work of Peyton Rous. Reflecting his work at the Institute are letters of colleagues, information on assistants, and reports to the directors (1909-1959). Additional material relates to Rous' diverse organizational interests, including the American Cancer Society, Century Association, Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research (at Yale University), Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Johns Hopkins University, National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, New York Academy of Medicine, Royal Society of Medicine Foundation, and Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.

A botanist and historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Conway Zirkle published on the history of evolutionary thought and genetics, with a particular interest in the discipline as practiced in the Soviet Union. The Zirkle Papers consist of approximately one linear foot of materials accrued by Zirkle during research for his book on Lysenko-era biology in the Soviet Union, The Death of Science in Russia (1949). Among the miscellaneous materials in the collection are four volumes (0.5 linear feet) of pressed specimens of ferns and algae.

Leonard Carmichael was a psychologist whose most significant contributions were made in the fields of child psychology and biopsychology. Educated at Tufts and Harvard, he taught at Princeton, Brown, and Rochester, later returning to Tufts to serve as its President from 1938-1952. An outstanding administrator, Carmichael served as executive officer for the Smithsonian Institute from 1952-1964, and was subsequently vice president for research and exploration at the National Geographic Society. In his later years, he served as President of the American Philosophical Society from 1970-1973. This large and varied collection reflects the entire range of Carmichael's prolific career. It includes a variety of types of records, including correspondence, committee reports and records, long series of articles and speeches, drafts of papers and books, and pocket notebooks. All phases of his professional life are covered, from his years in academia, to his time at the Smithsonian Institute and the National Geographic Society, as well as his involvement in a large number of professional organizations.

Correspondence, notebooks, research data related to Cole's career as the first director at the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, 1908-1937. His research of pneumonia was conducted when the disease was epidemic. Personal correspondence reflect Cole's life as a medical resident at Johns Hopkins, 1899-1908. Documented are his memberships in leading medical organizations throughout his career, including the Association of American Physicians and the New York Academy of Medicine. This collection showcases the evolving changes in the medical profession from practicing physician to clinician.

An archaeological anthropologist and linguist, John Alden Mason spent the majority of his career at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Penn in 1907, Mason received a doctorate at Berkeley (1911) for his ethnographic work on the Salinan Indians of California, but his diverse interests in later years ran the gamut from Puerto Rican folklore to Piman languages and cultures (including Pima, Papago, Pima Bajo, Northern and Southern Tepehuan, and Tepecano), Mayan, Aztec, and Incan archaeology, and the languages of South American Indians. Mason was curator of the University Museum at Penn from 1926 until his retirement in 1958. The Mason Papers include both in-coming and outgoing correspondence, linguistic material, notes, and photographs relating to Mason's work in the southwestern U.S., northern Mexico, and South America. Centered on the years after Mason's return to Philadelphia in 1926, the collection covers all aspects of Mason's professional life, from reports on field work to answering casual questions referred to him through the University Museum to data and analyses on Piman and other languages. The collection also contains voluminous files relating to the Mason's editorship of the American Anthropologist (bulk: 1945-1948). Of special note are a series of class notes (1908-1910) kept by Mason for course work in ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania under Edward Sapir and Frank Speck.