The Grace E.B. Murphy Papers include two distinct sets of diaries. The first, a two-volume account of her trip to Venezuela (2/19-3/14/1952), provides detailed accounts of animals (especially birds), vegetation (including mangrove forests and mango groves), and accounts of the people, social life, and appearance of towns and cities, including Caracas. Those interested in conservation efforts might gravitate towards entries describing a visit to a jaguar hunting camp (e.g. 3/3/1952) and descriptions of the burgeoning oil industry (2/16/1952 and 3/7/1952). Entries pertaining to oil extraction are particularly noteworthy because they include on-the-ground accounts of oil wells and comparisons of U.S. foreign policy with regards to Venezuela and Iran. Researchers may find more detailed accounts in Murphy's typed notes contained in seven folders of "Vacation in Venezuela."
 
Murphy's excursion to Antarctica sprawls across four notebooks, though "No. I," which spans 1/26-2/15/1967, provides the most detailed and sequential account of her trip to Antarctica. Entries provide accounts of other travelers, social obligations, modes of transportation, scenery, wildlife (especially penguins), glaciers and icebergs, and destinations including Buenos Aires (1/26), Punta Arenas (1/28), and Antarctica (beginning 2/5). Perhaps most remarkable are Murphy's lyrical accounts of Antarctica (e.g. 2/2, 2/5, 2/6), candid reflections on her relationship with her husband, Robert (2/4, 2/8), and even her disability (1/29). (Those interested in disability studies might also reference the folders "Your Deafness is Not You," enclosed in the same box.)
 
"No. II" picks up on 2/11/1967 but continues through 3/31/1970 with some entries related to South Africa
 
while it includes several self-contained entries, most of this notebook is comprised of supplemental notes and questions. "No. III" includes still further miscellaneous notes as well as entries from the end of the Antarctic excursion, dates 2/16-21. Finally, a fourth volume, entitled "For Grace" contains accounts from 2/10, 2/15, 2/16, 2/18, and 2/19
 
however, the penmanship differs from the early notebooks and it is not immediately clear who authored these accounts. (It could very well be her husband, Robert).

Grace Murphy's diaries offer a limited but detailed account of her travels to Argentina, Antarctica, and Venezuela with her husband, Robert Cushman Murphy in six volumes chronicling the years 1952 and 1967-70. These notebooks ought to interest researchers examining mid-century conservation, disability studies (particular the deaf), excursions to Antarctica, Venezuela under military dictatorship, and the career of Robert Cushman Murphy (whose papers are also available at the American Philosophical Society).
 
The Grace E.B. Murphy Papers include two distinct sets of diaries. The first, a two-volume account of her trip to Venezuela (2/19-3/14/1952), provides detailed accounts of animals (especially birds), vegetation (including mangrove forests and mango groves), and accounts of the people, social life, and appearance of towns and cities, including Caracas. Those interested in conservation efforts might gravitate towards entries describing a visit to a jaguar hunting camp (e.g. 3/3/1952) and descriptions of the burgeoning oil industry (2/16/1952 and 3/7/1952). Entries pertaining to oil extraction are particularly noteworthy because they include on-the-ground accounts of oil wells and comparisons of U.S. foreign policy with regards to Venezuela and Iran. Researchers may find more detailed accounts in Murphy's typed notes contained in seven folders of "Vacation in Venezuela."
 
Murphy's excursion to Antarctica sprawls across four notebooks, though "No. I," which spans 1/26-2/15/1967, provides the most detailed and sequential account of her trip to Antarctica. Entries provide accounts of other travelers, social obligations, modes of transportation, scenery, wildlife (especially penguins), glaciers and icebergs, and destinations including Buenos Aires (1/26), Punta Arenas (1/28), and Antarctica (beginning 2/5). Perhaps most remarkable are Murphy's lyrical accounts of Antarctica (e.g. 2/2, 2/5, 2/6), candid reflections on her relationship with her husband, Robert (2/4, 2/8), and even her disability (1/29). (Those interested in disability studies might also reference the folders "Your Deafness is Not You," enclosed in the same box.)
 
"No. II" picks up on 2/11/1967 but continues through 3/31/1970 with some entries related to South Africa
 
while it includes several self-contained entries, most of this notebook is comprised of supplemental notes and questions. "No. III" includes still further miscellaneous notes as well as entries from the end of the Antarctic excursion, dates 2/16-21. Finally, a fourth volume, entitled "For Grace" contains accounts from 2/10, 2/15, 2/16, 2/18, and 2/19
 
however, the penmanship differs from the early notebooks and it is not immediately clear who authored these accounts. (It could very well be her husband, Robert).

Russian-readers will be richly rewarded, given that Dobzhansky modulates entries between Russian and English. In some entries, he self-consciously reflects on the language he opts to use. For example, on February 16, 1952, he imagines his child (Sophie) as the audience of his entries: "I am switching to English, in order that my child would find it easier to accompany her father's experiences, is she wants to accompany them."
 
Even in diaries recorded predominantly in Russian, Dobzhansky encloses numerous ephemera—business cards, letters, hand-drawn sketches, recognitions/awards, medical test results, newspaper clippings, and more—accessible to English-speakers. In many of his diaries from the 1950s and 1960s, typed letters provide some insights into his thoughts on health, mortality, and faith (e.g. 2/16/1952, 5/16/1957, 7/16/1968, 10/13/1969)
 
(strained) relations with his children (e.g. 5/16/1957, 10/28/1968, 12/31/1968)
 
and career (3/25/1970
 
6/30/1970, 1/25/1975).
 
Dobzhansky traveled widely, providing particularly detailed accounts of South America and the American West. While English entries largely abstains from discussing politics, he does occasionally discuss Brazilian politics (e.g. 9/7/1954, 10/16/1955), and the election of Richard Nixon, about whom he is consistently critical (e.g. 11/6/1970, 12/31/1973, 8/8/1974).
 
Throughout his four decades of journal-writing, Dobzhansky expresses one consistent concern: his desire to continue doing useful work. Marking his final birthday, he writes, "So, I have lived ¾ of a century. Today begins the last quarter, or rather past thereof…Oh God, give me power to finish my life serving you by doing my life work in science! In 75 years I have not yet exhausted either my interest or, I hope, my ability" (1/25/1975).

The Dobzhansky Papers feature 47 volumes spanning 1934-1975. (The boxes in which they are enclosed also include other notebooks and workbooks without sequential entries.) These diaries ought to interest researchers studying genetics and evolutionary biology, early-twentieth-century travel expeditions (particularly into the Amazon), the creationist debate (especially in textbooks and public schools), the post-war university (Columbia University, in particular), South American politics, and Dobzhansky's biography.
 
Russian-readers will be richly rewarded, given that Dobzhansky modulates entries between Russian and English. In some entries, he self-consciously reflects on the language he opts to use. For example, on February 16, 1952, he imagines his child (Sophie) as the audience of his entries: "I am switching to English, in order that my child would find it easier to accompany her father's experiences, is she wants to accompany them."
 
Even in diaries recorded predominantly in Russian, Dobzhansky encloses numerous ephemera—business cards, letters, hand-drawn sketches, recognitions/awards, medical test results, newspaper clippings, and more—accessible to English-speakers. In many of his diaries from the 1950s and 1960s, typed letters provide some insights into his thoughts on health, mortality, and faith (e.g. 2/16/1952, 5/16/1957, 7/16/1968, 10/13/1969)
 
(strained) relations with his children (e.g. 5/16/1957, 10/28/1968, 12/31/1968)
 
and career (3/25/1970
 
6/30/1970, 1/25/1975).
 
Dobzhansky traveled widely, providing particularly detailed accounts of South America and the American West. While English entries largely abstains from discussing politics, he does occasionally discuss Brazilian politics (e.g. 9/7/1954, 10/16/1955), and the election of Richard Nixon, about whom he is consistently critical (e.g. 11/6/1970, 12/31/1973, 8/8/1974).
 
Throughout his four decades of journal-writing, Dobzhansky expresses one consistent concern: his desire to continue doing useful work. Marking his final birthday, he writes, "So, I have lived ¾ of a century. Today begins the last quarter, or rather past thereof…Oh God, give me power to finish my life serving you by doing my life work in science! In 75 years I have not yet exhausted either my interest or, I hope, my ability" (1/25/1975).

The travel journals of Harvard professor, curator, and evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson ought to be near the top research lists of scholars investigating twentieth-century history, travel, conservation, anthropology, and paleontology. Available in seven boxes of handwritten journals, typed pages, carbon copies, and countless ephemera, Simpson's travel writings provide textured insights into his life, research, intellectual, philosophical, and political positions. Over the course of six decades of journaling (1924-1984), Simpson records at least 36 distinct expeditions, traveling to every continent and documenting discoveries in extraordinary detail and literary style. (Consider the locations identified with this note representative rather than comprehensive of his diverse travels.) Noteworthy journals include: Depression-era trips to Patagonia (1931, 1934), an extended tour of Venezuela in the late-1930s (1938-39), trips to Brazil and the Amazon basin (1954-56, 1983-84), a tour to Spain under Franco (1960), expeditions in North Africa and the Middle East just before the Six Day War (1967), visits to Australia (1951, 1968), Fiji (1968), Indonesia (1975), Papua New Guinea (1976), trips to the Galapagos (1970, 1974), expeditions to the Arctic (1974) and Antarctica (1971-73), a trip to Soviet Union during the Cold War (1977), and a tour of China after its economic reforms (1980).; In his travels, Simpson's mastery of detail is matched only by his curiosity and literary flourish. For example, during his 1938-39 Venezuela tour, he discusses everything from population density (4/25/1939) and the work of Catholic missionaries with indigenous populations (1/15/1939) to the sweet coffee in Barquisimeto (9/21/1938) and his method for killing an opossum without damaging its skin (10/6/1938). At times, his reflections blur the boundaries of prose and poetry. In a collection of reminders from his time in Los Robles, he lists: "The noise they make to shoo animals--This can't be written even approximately, something like the clearing of a throat long and viciously. The sound of rain falling on canvas, on bushes, everywhere, the roar of flooding gullies, and slip and thud of landslides. The sound of pigs slashing and shearing by night outside the kitchen. The smell of fresh, heavily roasted coffee being ground…Hillsides brilliant yellow and pale green with mecutera" (12/19/1938). Researchers may anticipate discovering such redolent entries scattered throughout Simpson's journals, as suggested by Selected Quotations. Although items are not individually cataloged, scholars may choose to begin to mine this rich collection using Anne Roe Simpson's "Note on travel diaries."