Physical description

Ca. 2500 items, 3 linear feet.

Provenance

Presented by Marion Irwin Osterhout and accessioned, 12/--/1962 (1962 2280ms). Additional papers donated by Marion Irwin Osterhout and accessioned, 11/20/1968 (1868 2717ms).

Processing information

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

The Osterhout Collection records the scientific career of Winthrop John Van Leuven Osterhout from the 1890s to the 1950s. The correspondence, drafts of papers, lectures, and photographs document significant trends in American life sciences. Having begun at the botany department at Brown University, Osterhout continued working in botany at Berkeley (where he completed his doctorate in 1899) on problems of cell division in plants. While a professor of botany at Harvard (1909-1924) he began his innovative research program on the physico-chemical properties of membranes and cytoplasm of algae cells. He expanded this program (related to neurophysiology) after succeeding his late mentor Jacques Loeb in 1924 as head of the physiology department at the Rockefeller Institute. During these years Osterhout was also associated with the marine laboratories in Pacific Grove, Woods Hole, and Bermuda, and with the Agassiz Museum; he was also a founding editor of the Journal of General Physiology. As his papers show, Osterhout's scientific path bridged two major intellectual traditions: the agricultural and the medical, linking studies in botany and zoology with the new discipline of general physiology. His research program also reflected the shift in emphasis from morphological to physico-chemical problems in physiology. Indeed, his studies at the Rockefeller Institute of membrane permeability and bio-electric phenomena merged important areas in biochemistry, biophysics, and physiology (especially neurophysiology), as is reflected in his correspondence with other leaders in these fields.

Svante Arrhenius received the Nobel Prize in 1903 for his studies of electrolytic dissociation in solutions, work which was on the borderland of physics and chemistry. Two years later he assumed the directorship of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry, a post he held until his death. His proclivity for interdisciplinary topics led him to apply principles from physical chemistry to immunology and to advance theories of cosmology and the origin of life (Worlds in the Making, 1908). His broad scientific interests and his position in the Nobel Institute placed him at the center of international communities of physical and life scientists.

W. J. V. Osterhout met Arrhenius at Berkeley, where Arrhenius was a visiting professor shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize. The friendship which developed between the two men is reflected in their correspondence.

• Harvard University
• Rockefeller Institute
• Rothamsted Experimental Station.
• University of California, Berkeley

• Manuscripts (for publication).
• Photoprints.

• Arrhenius, Svante, 1859-1927
• Blinks, L. R. (Lawrence Rogers), 1900-1989
• Brierley, William B.
• Bronk, Detlev W. (Detlev Wulf), 1897-1975
• Burbank, Luther, 1849-1926
• Crozier, William John, 1892-1955
• Fenn, Wallace O.
• Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946
• Gasser, Herbert Spencer, 1888-
• Loeb, Jacques, 1859-1924
• Northrop, John Howard, 1891-1987
• Osterhout, W. J. V. (Winthrop John Van Leuven), 1871-1964
• Parker, George Howard, 1864-1955
• Shapley, Harlow, 1885-1972
• Shedlovsky, Theodore, 1898-1976
• Strasburger, Eduard, 1844-1912
• Vries, Hugo de,1848-1935.
• Wheeler, Benjamin I. (Benjamin Ide), 1854-1927

• Agricultural experiment stations -- England.
• Electrophysiology of plants.
• Plant cells and tissues -- Electric properties.
• Plant physiology.
• Science publishing.