This collection includes correspondence, research data, reviews of grant proposals, organizations participated in, laboratories worked for, and student recommendations. The correspondence in the collection dates primarily to the 1960s-70s, when Mildred Cohn worked at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia, later renamed, Fox Chase Cancer Center. The letters are professional in content, discussing biochemistry, molecular biology, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. The letters also concern lectures and participation in conferences and symposia, and there are materials relating to recommendations for students and colleagues for positions and promotions. Dr. Cohn's interest and involvement in the issue of women in science is presented, of particular note, her work with the University of Pennsylvania's Gender Equity Committee. The notebooks, by Cohn, her colleagues and students, contain extensive experimental data.

A bacteriologist from MIT, Salvador E. Luria's work with Max Delbruck on bacteriophage demonstrated that bacterial resistance to certain phages arose through genetic mutations. His later work showed that phages also mutate genetically. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969 with Max Delbruck and Alfred D. Hershey. The collection is organized into seven series: I. Correspondence, 1938-1992 ; IIa. Subject Files, 1938-1990 ; IIb. Personal Material. 1923-1991 ; III. Works by Luria, 1938-1987 ; IV. Works by Others, 1944-1990 ; V. Research Notes and Notebooks, 1941-1979 ; VI. Course Material, 1931-1991 ; VII. Photographs and Negatives, 1957-1982. Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title and then chronological within each folder.

A physicist with the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Walter Goad became interested in molecular biology in the mid-1960s, devoting nearly all of his research to the analysis, storage and retrieval of information relating to nucleic acid sequences by the early 1970s. He was among the founders of GenBank, the world's first nucleic acid database, and was influential in the development of computational techniques for the analysis of DNA sequences. In the late 1980s, he served on the steering committee overseeing the establishment of the Human Genome Project. The Goad Papers relate primarily to the establishment and early operation of GenBank, the early phases of the Human Genome Project, and, more generally, to Goad's role as godfather of the new field of bioinformatics.