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.

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.