A Yale-educated ethnographer, William Fenton devoted most of his career to study of the Haudenosaunee. Receiving his doctorate in 1937, Fenton worked with the Bureau of American Ethnology for a number of years before becoming Director of the New York State Museum and professor at SUNY Albany. The Fenton Papers covers all aspects of William Fenton's professional life, documenting his varied positions as community worker for the New York Agency of the U.S. Indian Service, 1935-1937 (accounts, reports, correspondence); associate anthropologist and senior ethnologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1939-1951 (includes notebooks, letters from the field); Executive Secretary of Anthropology and Psychology, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1952-1954; and Assistant Commissioner, New York State Museum and Science Service, 1954-1968.

Dell Hymes' doctoral research on Kathlamet Chinook (Indiana University, 1955) grew into a lifelong interest in the relationship between ethnography and linguistics. Following academic appointments at Harvard University (1955-1960) and the University of California, Berkley (1960-1965), Hymes joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. During twenty-two years tenure at Penn he was a professor of folklore, linguistics, sociology and education. In 1975, he was promoted to Dean of the Graduate School of Education (1975-1987). A principal proponent of the emergent field of sociolinguistics, his most influential works include Reinventing Anthropology and Language in Culture and Society. The Hymes papers cover all aspects of Dell Hymes' professional life. Subcollection I is concentrated on his years at the University of Pennsylvania, his presidencies of the American Association of Anthropology and the Linguistic Society of America, and his editorship of the journal Language in Society. Subcollection II is broader, focusing much more on published and unpublished linguistic work on dozens of languages, mostly of North America. Of particular interest is his rich correspondence with colleagues and students on linguistic issues. The papers reflect Hymes' interests in the history of linguistics and anthropology, Native American languages (especially oral literatures), and his comparative ethnographies of communication.

The James V. Neel Papers document nearly every phase of the career of one of the founders of human population genetics in the United States. Neel was particularly thorough and organized, and retained virtually all of his significant scientific correspondence, committee reports, minutes of meetings, and drafts of manuscripts. The collection also includes data collected during Neel's work among the Xavante, Yanomanö and other indigenous populations. In a career that spanned the period from the late work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and Charles B. Davenport to the contemporary world of molecular genetics and nucleic acids, Neel knew, worked with, and corresponded with many of the most influential 20th century practitioners of genetics. The collection begins in earnest in 1943, after Neel had decided to focus on human genetics. Neel's work with Drosophila and none of his Drosophila manuscripts are found in the collection.