The material in this collection was primarily collected by Irene Tramm, the Departmental Administrator of the Columbia University Physics Department in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for the creation of a local exhibition on the history of the department, and for information compiled into a publication A Brief History: The Columbia University Physics Department. It is a random assortment of historical material, consisting of photographs, negatives, faculty and guest lecturer correspondence, biographical materials for some of the faculty, programs from various lecture series given at Columbia, publications, picture postcards, and even a sheet of commemorative postage stamps.