The bacteriologist and virologist Thomas Milton Rivers spent over thirty years at the Rockefeller Institute as a researcher in the Department of Bacteriology and from 1937-1955, as Director. Working on measles and pneumonia, Rivers discovered the parainfluenzae bacillus and cultivated vaccine virus for human use, and during the 1950s, he played an important role in coordinating research on poliomyelitis as head of the National Institute for Infantile Paralysis. During the Second World War, Rivers led the Naval Medical Research Unit in the South Pacific, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral. The Rivers Papers contains correspondence, laboratory notes, speeches, and photographs documenting Rivers' activities at the Rockefeller Institute, the development of polio vaccine, and Rivers' Navy experience in the Pacific during World War II.

A physician and naturalist, Oswald Hope Robertson worked at the Rockefeller Institute, the Peking Union Medical College, and at the medical school of University of Chicago (1927-1951). With a broad range of research interests, Robertson contributed important work on the transmission of pneumonia, the disinfection of air with glycol vapors, and later in his career, on the physiology and ecology of salmonid fishes. He is best remembered, however, as the creator of the first blood bank, established for use by British and American forces during the First World War. The Robertson Papers contain correspondence, notes, articles, and notebooks on many of Robertson's major research interests, including his work on blood. His early work on salmonid ecology is represented in a journal and eleven notebooks stemming from fieldwork in the lakes of the Wind River Range in northwestern Wyoming, 1942-1951. There is also interesting material on the Research Corporation (New York City) concerning patents on glycol vapors and air sterilizers, as well as notes and manuscripts of papers on morphine experiments, canine pneumococcus, bacteremia, and the effects of hydrocortisone.