Letters to Jill #42, September 17, 1945

Documenting the personal life and professional activities of 1969 Nobelist Dr. A.D. Hershey, the Alfred Day Hershey Collection consists of personal and professional correspondence; academic publications, honors and awards; and records of research conducted at the Carnegie Institute of Washington at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. It is divided into three record groups: Record Group I: Professional Papers, 1949-1997; Record Group II: Personal Papers, 1918-2000; and Record Group III: Photographs, 1947-1998.

The collection includes awards, clippings, correspondence, honorary diplomas, photographs, publications, reports, research notes, and scrapbooks. Hersheys professional correspondence is chiefly administrative in nature, addressing his transition from the Department of Bacteriology at Washington Universitys School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO to the Carnegie Institute of Washington in Cold Spring Harbor, NY and his salary, expense, and equipment requests while employed there as a researcher and director. Additionally, contained within Hersheys professional correspondence are several notes from colleagues (as well as a telegram from President Richard Nixon) congratulating Dr. Hershey on having been awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology or Medicine. These correspondences have not been broken up into sent and received series, as many of the letters are carbon copies.

The bulk of Hersheys personal papers consist of correspondence to and from Harriet Jill Davidson from July 1945 until their marriage in November of the same year. Also included are five scrapbooks containing clippings, photographs, and other ephemera documenting Dr. Hersheys scientific achievements as well as his familys travels to Stockholm, Sweden, where they accompanied him at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in December 1969. This collection also contains a small amount of correspondence between Alfred Hershey and Norman Melechan spanning the time of 1985-1995. These files include letters pertaining to personal content and everyday life.