Correspondence, family papers, subject files, speeches, and other papers relating to John W. Draper's scientific work, his involvement with th American Chemical Society, his work as president of the Medical College of New York University (1850-82), and his writings, including his address (1860) before the British Association for the Advancement of Science which prompted the Bishop Wilberforce-Thomas Huxley exchange on Darwin's theory on the origin of species. Correspondents include Benjamin Alvord, Theodorus Bailey, George Bancroft, Frederick Augustus Barnard, George Bell, Schuyler Colfax, George W. Cullum, John Adolphus B. Dahlgren, James Dwight Dana, William Darling, Charles Darwin, John Gibson, William E. Gladstone, Ulysses S. Grant, William Babcock Hazen, John Fredereick William Herschel, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benson J. Lossing, Valentine Mott, Simon Newcomb, William T. Sherman, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., Ainsworth R. Spofford, Edwin M. Stanton, John Tyndall, Gideon Welles, Josiah Dwight Whitney, and Thomas J. Wood. Includes papers of Draper's sons, John Christopher, Henry, and Daniel, and other members of the Draper, Maury, and Ludlow families. Papers of Daniel Draper relate to his work (1869-1911) with the New York Meteorological Observatory and include correspondence with Cleveland Abbe, Alexander Graham Bell, James McKeen Cattell, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, Valentine Mott, Charles Piazzi Smyth, and John Tyndall.