A physicist and social activist, Edward G. Ramberg contributed to the early development of electron microscopy and color television, and devoted much of his life to pacifist and Quaker causes. Born in Italy to an American mother and German father, Ramberg experienced the losses of war firsthand during the First World War when his father was killed while serving with the German army. After moving to the United States with his mother, Ramberg attended Reed College and Cornell University before returning to Germany for postdoctoral study under Arnold Sommerfeld. Employed at RCA for most of his career (1935-1972), Ramberg refused any involvement in military or war-related research, and as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, was assigned to duty in Civilian Public Service camps. He continued to work in fostering social harmony until late in life. With his wife, Sarah Sargent, a Swarthmore graduate whom he met through the American Friends Service Committee, Ramberg helped to establish Bryn Gweled, a cooperative community in which people of various religious, social, and racial backgrounds lived and worked together. The bulk of the Ramberg papers consists of files pertaining to his work with Amnesty International, the American Friends Service Committee, and peace groups in the Philadelphia and Bucks County region. Of particular note is a bundle of correspondence with Sommerfeld.

Hans Ris (1914-2004) was an American cytologist and pioneer electron microscopist. His studies of chromosome structure revealed the importance of non-histone proteins and he was one of the first to recognize that blue-green algae was a special type of bacteria. He coined the term genophore for prokaryote DNA. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974, he was a founder of the American Society for Cell Biology. The Hans Ris papers consist of correspondence, research notes, published and unpublished works by Ris and others, related to the latter part of his career. The bulk of the collection contains micrographs from the High Voltage Electron Microscopy (HVEM).

Thomas F. Anderson (1911-1991) was a biophysicist and electron microscopist whose research included Raman spectroscopy; the physiology of yeast; the biological effects of radiation; the biological applications of electron microscopy; and the genetics of bacteria, bacterial viruses, and bacteriophage. He was a Professor of Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Member of the Institute for Cancer Research in Fox Chase.