Charles A. Goessmann, ca.1890

German-born agricultural chemist, professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst when it was known as Massachusetts Agricultural College, and President of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists and the American Chemical Society who made several important contributions in nineteenth century chemistry and held at least four patents.

The Goessman collection includes correspondence (mostly professional), some with presidents of Massachusetts Agricultural College, William Smith Clark (1826-1886) and Henry Hill Goodell (1839-1905). Also contains handwritten drafts of addresses and articles, his dissertation, printed versions of published writings, handwritten lecture notes, class records, proposed college curricula, notes taken by students, handwritten research notes, newsclippings and offprints utilized in research, and biographical materials.

Hudsonian godwit hatchlings

An ornithologist and conservationist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Joseph A. “Archie” Hagar’s career was rooted in the generation of naturalists such as William Brewster, Edward Howe Forbush, and Arthur Cleveland Bent. Born in Lawrence, Mass., on May 13, 1896, Hagar’s undergraduate career at Harvard was interrupted by service in the First World War, after which he completed his studies at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, graduating with the class of 1921. An expert field biologist and ecologist, he was appointed State Ornithologist in the Department of Fish and Game in November 1934 serving in that position for almost twenty five years. A specialist in waterfowl and raptors, Hagar was deeply involved in early conservation efforts in New England, noted for his work on wetland conservation and for linking the use of DDT with eggshell thinning in peregrine falcons, and he was famously at the center of a dispute with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the design of the Parker River Wildlife Refuge. Never a prolific writer, he was an active member of the American Ornithological Union, the Nuttall Ornithological Club, the Wildlife Society, and other professional organizations, and after retirement, he was specially cited for his work in waterfowl conservation by Ducks Unlimited. Active until late in life, he died at home in Marshfield Hills on Dec. 17, 1989.

The Hagar Papers are a deep and valuable resource for the study of New England birds and the growth of modern conservation biology. With abundant professional correspondence, field notes on shorebirds and raptors, and drafts of articles, the collection documents the full range of Hagar’s activities as State Ornithologist, including a particularly thick run of material for the controvery over the Parker River Wildlife Refuge. Hagar also acquired a set of field notes, 1897-1921, from the Harvard ornithologist John E. Thayer.

A particle physicist educated at Johns Hopkins (PhD, 1965), Stanley S. Hertzbach joined the Physics faculty at UMass Amherst in 1965. Over the course of his career, he took part in high-energy experimental work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the CERN hadron collider, the Cornell electron synchrotron, and beginning in 1979, at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). With his colleague Richard Koffler, Hertzbach joined the SLD collaboration at SLAC in 1986 studying Z particles, and the BaBar (B Meson) group in 1994. A major contributor to the SLD “beamline group,” Hertzbach took part in the BaBar calorimeter beam test and in testing of its calorimeter modules. He was an active member of the SLD advisory group and chaired the SLAC Users Organization (SLUO) in the 1990s. Hertzbach’s contributions to UMass included service on several committees relating to student achievement, including a stint as Undergraduate Advising Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Hertzbach retired from UMass in 2009.

The Hertzbach collection consists of two distinct parts: six laboratory notebooks kept while conducting research at SLAC (1987-2002), and approximately 0.5 linear feet of records from university committees on which Hertzbach sat (e.g. the Space and Calendar, 1977-1983).

Born at Ancram, N.Y., the merchant Benjamin Hoag (1865-1932) lived most of his life in Stephentown, N.Y., near the Massachusetts border. In 1900, he was listed as a dealer in bicycles, but by 1910, he was operating a broader retail trade in dry goods and grains. At the same time, he conducted a thriving trade in ornithological and oological supplies, announcing in journals such as The Oologist that he sold “books, periodicals, tools, supplies, eggs” as well as “fine line fish tackle and rods.” He also appears to have run a magazine subscription agency, offering everything from the Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping to professional journals such as the Condor Magazine.

The Hoag collection consists of 1,345 letters, mostly incoming, and over 800 pieces receipts, ephemeral items, and other documents, relating to both Hoag’s oological and magazine businesses. Concentrated between 1901 and 1914, the collection offers a rich documentation of the oological trade in the years shortly before it was outlawed in 1918.

Bronislaw Honigberg was a parasitologist who, though studying the intestinal parasites of amphibians, provided research for the U.S. Department of Public Health’s infections diseases lab. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920, Honigberg fled to the United States at the beginning of World War II, cutting short his Polish medical education to become an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley, where he earned his B.A. (1943), M.A (1946) and Ph.D. (1960). Honigberg joined the University faculty in 1961 and taught in the zoology department until his death in 1992.

The collection is comprised of Honigberg’s lecture notes, including exams, lab exercises, and illustrative material. There is also five folder of reprints spanning the years 1949 to 1991 and thus representing Honigberg’s research throughout his career.

A pioneer in the chemistry of protists, Seymour H. Hunter (1911-2003) was among the founders of the Haskins Laboratories in 1935, helping to establish its programs in microbiology, genetics, and nutrition (now affiliated with Pace University). His diverse research interests centered on protist nutrition, and he is credited with significant advances in understanding the ecology of marine plankton and the development of culturing methods for algae and protists. Stemming from his work on nutrition in Euglena, he developed microbiological assays for the determination of vitamin B12 in human tissues, and other research was foundational for understanding of the role of chelation for metals in culture systems and clinical use. Sometimes called a “protozoology missionary,” Hutner was a founding member of the Society of Protozoologists And was noted for his ability to recruit and inspire students and colleagues.

The Hutner Papers contain a significant run of scientific correspondence concentrated in the 1970s and 1980s, relating to Hutner’s research, publications, and the Haskins Lab, along with a small amount of material relating to his position at Pace University and some personal correspondence.

David R. Inglis at Argonne N.L., ca.1953

David R. Inglis enjoyed a distinguished career in nuclear physics that ranged from theoretical work on the structure of the nucleus in the 1930s to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and work on renewable energy in the 1960s and 1970s. A Professor of Physics at UMass from 1969-1975, Inglis was a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists and from the mid-1940s on, he dedicated himself to informing public policy on the dangers of nuclear technologies.

The Inglis Papers offer a perspective on the life and career of a theoretical physicist who grew from an early involvement in the Manhattan Project to becoming a committed critic of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Although the collection is relatively sparse in unpublished scientific work, it includes valuable correspondence relating to Inglis’s efforts with the Federation of American Scientists and other organizations to influence public policy on issues relating to disarmament and nuclear power.

Beginning with his dissertation in theoretical astrophysics “Local irregularities in a universe satisfying the cosmological principle” (Harvard, 1961), William M. Irvine enjoyed a distinguished career as an astronomer and a role as one of the primary figures in developing astronomy at the Five Colleges. Arriving at UMass in 1966, Irvine helped build the graduate program in astronomy and beginning in 1969, he was a motive force in establishing the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Focussed largely on the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds and the physics and chemistry of comets, and with a broad interest in bioastronomy, Irvine has been a prolific contributor to his field, and has served as Vice President of the Commission on Bio-astronomy at the International Astronomical Union, a member of Federal Union, Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences at the American Astronomical Society, and he has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Irvine Papers offer a thorough record of the establishment of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory from 1969 through its dedication in Oct. 1976, along with insights into the growth of astronomy at UMass. Correspondence, memoranda, grant applications, and many dozens of photographs offer insight into the financial and political challenges of building the Observatory in the Quabbin watershed. The collection also includes notes for teaching Astronomy 101 and 223 (planetary science).

John Kloetzel began his academic career in 1967 with his Johns Hopkins dissertation on the fine structure of the larval salivary gland in a dipteran. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado, however, he began publishing on the structure of the ciliate cytoskeleton, working on Euplotes for much of his nearly forty year career at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. A past president of the International Society of Protistologists, Kloetzel has retired to Oregon.

The bulk of the Kloetzel Papers consists of TEM and SEM micrographs of protists, along with some correspondence, grant proposals, and manuscripts.

A specialist in the cryptophycaea, Paul Kugrens was born in Latvia in 1942 and lived in Pegnitz, Germany, until he emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of eight. After receiving bachelors and masters degrees in zoology at the University of Nebraska and a doctorate at Berkeley (1971), Kugrens joined the faculty at Colorado State, remaining there for thirty-seven years. His research centered on the cell biology and ultrastructure of the cryptophytes Chroomonas, Cryptomonas, and Rhodomonas, and microalgae such as Prymnesium and Cyanophora.

The Kugrens papers include extensive documentation of the research and professional activities of a phycologist, including correspondence, grants proposals, manuscripts, and field data, along with thousands of electronic micrographs.