Collections listed below document aspects of science and medicine. Materials may be accessed by request in the Reading Room in Seidman House. Contact Leigh Rupinski at (616) 331-8726 or [email protected] to schedule a research appointment.

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Floyd E. Westfall was born in Niles, Michigan on May 20^th, 1876. In 1899, he graduated from the University of Michigan with interest in Homeopathic medicine. He was a member of the American Institute of Homeopathy in which he was the assistant to the chair of theory and practice (1901-1904), and assistant to chair of surgery in 1904. He purchased the medical practice of Perry W. Cornue, M.D. in Ypsilanti in 1904. Westfall married Kate R. Thompson and had two children.  Westfall died in October 1972. Collection includes diaries kept by Westfall during high school and college, cash account books kept in high school until 1925, and a small notebook of unidentified code.

View the Floyd E. Westfall Papers Finding Aid

Icie Macie Hoobler established the nutritional research program at the Merrill-Palmer Institute and the Children's Hospital of Michigan. She also served on the Board of Control at Grand Valley State College from 1960-1969. The collection includes early files of the Board of Control and publications by Icie Macie Hoobler on the health and nutrition of children and mothers.

View the Icie Macie Hoobler Collection Finding Aid

This collection of correspondence to Henry Gilson and his second wife, Hilda Kruse-Gilson, consists of letters primarily from family and friends, spanning from 1921 to 1952. Henry Gilson briefly worked as a salesman and engineer, but eventually became the Vice President of the U.S. Rubber Co. Hilda attended nursing school at the Clifton Springs Sanitarium and Training School for Nurses and worked as an assistant superintendent of nurses at the Clifton Springs Sanitarium in Clifton Springs, N.Y. After the birth of their last child, the Gilson family moved from New Rochelle, New York to Naugatuck, Connecticut.

View the Kruse-Gilson Family Papers Finding Aid

Ralph Baldwin was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During World War II, Ralph Baldwin was a senior physicist in the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he helped develop the radio proximity fuze, a crucial secret weapon of the war. The collection includes technical correspondence; correspondence concerning the publication of The Deadly Fuze; articles; general correspondence; speeches; copies of personal papers; and an autobiography called The Life of Ralph Baldwin.

View the Ralph Baldwin Papers Finding Aid