Chemists (scientists)

The Allan P. Colburn notebooks document the education of Allan P. Colburn (1904-1955), a prominent researcher in the field of chemistry and former University of Delaware provost and coordinator of scientific research. The bulk of the material, covering the period of 1924 to 1929, consists of lecture notes and related materials for various chemistry and engineering classes Colburn took at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Harry Fletcher Brown collection, spanning the years 1881-1960 (bulk dates 1910-1952), contains correspondence, newspaper clippings, speeches, business cards, legal documents, printed material, ephemera, a photograph, World War I medal, programs, and blueprints of his Wilmington, Delaware, residence.

Philadelphia chemist John Davis’s manuscript book is filled with medicinal formulae and numerous laid-in receipts and household hints. There are over 135 items as varied as medicinal receipts, graduation announcements, poetry, sketches, and a silhouette.

Richard F. Heck (1931-2015), namesake of the Heck Reaction, was an American chemist awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with palladium to catalyze organic chemical reactions. The Richard F. Heck papers, 1931-2012, comprise personal documents, photographs, professional honors and citations, publications, and material related to his 2010 Nobel Prize, including his Nobel diploma and a doctoral hat from Uppsala University (2011).

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Charles J. Pedersen’s “Food Book No. 1” contains thirty-eight pages of gastronomical entries, including lists of food items on hand, comments on recipes, and items in the refrigerator or freezer, all arranged by date.

The Frank W. Tober papers comprise letters, postcards, photographs, pamphlets, magazines, newspaper clippings, newsletters, printing ephemera, invoices, notebooks, woodblocks, prints, coins, sculpture, and other realia. A major portion of the papers relate to Tober's collections and collecting activities. Tober was a chemical engineer with a substantial personal interest in the study of rare books, printing, Napoleon and the French Revolution, and, in particular, literary forgery.

Personal and professional papers of William John Williams, an analytical chemist who immigrated to the United States in 1885 from Abergele, North Wales in Great Britain, and worked in a number of manufacturing fields, including fertilizers, soaps, bleaches, brickmaking, and sewage and water treatment. A tremendous amount of his work was with phosphates, reflected in this collection by the substantial amount of notes and correspondence about various chemical processes involving phosphates.

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Charles J. Pedersen’s “Wine Book” is a seventy-two page volume with fifty-eight pages filled. This log book records the results of wine tasting. There are columns describing 368 bottles of wine, individuals who sampled them, the food with which they were served, and the quality.