Overview Charles Eastwick Smith (1820-1900) was an engineer and inventor involved in railroad, ironworks and steel. His interest in botany led him to membership at the Academy of Natural Sciences where he held several positions from 1851 until his death. Over the years Smith compiled an herbarium of specimens found within 15 miles of Philadelphia, which he bequeathed to the Academy. The collection contains letters from botanists, a number of booksellers, and other correspondents. In addition to the...

Scope and Contents A pharmacist and botanist of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Rau became an authority on mosses and fungi, assembling large collections which mostly went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Elected a correspondent of this Academy in 1883, he bequeathed a collection of books to it (mostly from L. D. von Schweinitz library) and an herbarium of flowering plants. He published jointly with A. B. Hervey, a Catalogue of North American Musci, 1880. Formerly in the keeping of...

Overview Joseph Mellick Leidy (1823-1891), one of the great American scientists of the 19th century, possessed a vast knowledge of the natural world. Best known as the Father of American vertebrate paleontology, he also pioneered the fields of parasitology and protozoology, and was the preeminent anatomist of his time. He was also an influential teacher of natural history and an expert in areas as diverse as entomology, geology and pathology. The Joseph Leidy Correspondence collection contains...