Chiefly correspondence with Alexander John Gaspard Marcet on chemistry, with references to Sir Joseph Banks, Jean Francois Berger, Johan Jakob Berzelius, Jean-Baptiste Biot, and others; a few letters to and from John Bostock, Thomas Cooper, John Wilson Croker, Giovanni Fabbroni, and Henry Penneck.

The collection consists of correspondence, notes, memoranda, extracts from publications, reprints, drafts of essays, poems, magazine and newspaper articles, comic strips, popular songs, and other material on bioluminescence, collected principally between 1945-1959 for his History of Luminescence from the Earliest Times until 1900 (American Philosophical Society Memoirs 44, 1957). Other topics are chemistry, military medicine, natural history, and professional associations.

Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864, APS 1805) was a scientist and educator. As a professor of chemistry at Yale University from 1802 to 1853, and pioneering teacher of chemistry, mineralogy and geology, Silliman was largely responsible for the conversion of Yale College to Yale University, with strong medical and scientific departments.