#1, 212,213 McFarland, Ross, Undated

The papers of Ross McFarland document his personal life as well as his professional activities. They span the years from an 1849 entry in a McFarland family history to 1980 correspondence regarding the Guggenheim chair at Harvard University. Included in the collection are original research data, unpublished reports and presentations, correspondence, McFarland publications and lectures, newspaper clippings, pocket appointment books, annotated desk calendars, and photographs.

Several aspects of McFarland's personal life are covered by the materials in the collection. That he had an active social life is shown by mementos such as invitations, calling cards, dance programs, etc. There are additional materials portraying other than professional activities. He had personal membership in the Committee for Safe Bicycling, the Club of Odd Volumes, and a number of other interest groups.

There are many items relating to the National Council on Religion in Higher Education, the organization which granted him the Fellowship enabling him to enter Harvard Graduate School. These items include correspondence, minutes of meetings, and programs. In this series in the collection are material about his extensive travel, including the 1934 trip to Russia and the trip home from Cambridge by way of the far east. In the personal section also are many photographs of him over the years, as well as his pocket diaries from 1923 to 1972, and his annotated desk calendars from 1956 to 1975.

The collection contains a great deal of correspondence, Personal and General. The Personal correspondence is that with his family and friends. The General is largely with professional colleagues. The correspondence in both categories is rich and varied. Within the family correspondence are many letters from his mother, brothers, sisters, and extended family members. He corresponded for years with friends from his days at Park College and the University of Michigan. The general correspondence ranges from routine business letters to in-depth discussions on scientific topics. Interchange of information and discussions about his research activities are to be found throughout the collection.

Among his correspondents were Amelia Earhart, James H. Doolittle, the Rockefellers, Howard A. Rusk, Queen Sophie of Greece, Ralph Nader, Kenneth Bergin, W. Bruce Dill, Richard G. Domey, Ashton Graybiel, Ancel Keys, Jerome Lederer, and Eric Liljencrantz.

There is a record of McFarland's education from his elementary school papers through his year as a Research Fellow at Cambridge University. There are report cards, class notes and student papers. Items from his social and extra-curricular activities are present also.

The bulk of the material in the collection covers McFarland's professional career, particularly his years of research at Columbia and Harvard Universities from 1928 to 1972. Among his research papers is material from his early studies of oxygen deficiency at high altitude. These studies, done while he was at Columbia, were important to the development of pressurized cabins of commercial airliners. In 1935 he participated in the International High Altitude Expedition to Chile. He gave sensory, motor, mental, and personality tests to natives of Chile and to expedition members. Among his papers are data which measured psychological deterioration in relation to the physiological changes. There are also reports on the work and correspondence about it.

There are extensive records of the work McFarland did in the late 1930s and early '40s that began the famed Pensacola Study of Naval Aviators. One thousand aviators were studied in investigating the problems of selecting and training pilots. The research continues as a longitudinal look at the health of a select group of men. As late as 1976 McFarland sent some of his papers from the study to the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory at Pensacola, Florida.

From his early years in the Fatigue Lab at Harvard there are data, reports, and correspondence. His papers from the later years in the Harvard School of Public Health include work on alcohol, highway safety, carbon monoxide, and aging.

McFarland's teaching is illuminated by lecture notes and correspondence. There are other materials regarding administrative matters in the universities, and many papers on the Aviation Health and Safety program, which he started at Harvard. In addition, there are some research papers by his students and photographs of seminar groups.

Among the papers deriving from his consulting activities are many which grew out of his relation to Pan American Airways. As his longest lasting consultantship, he was medical coordinator for Pan American from 1936 to 1952. He studied pilot fatigue during the long flight times in their air routes over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. His papers include reports of projects, medical reports, international inspection trips of Pan American facilities, and photographs of Pan American airplanes.

There are extensive correspondence files and many reports from the Commission on Accidental Trauma - Military Accidents, of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, of which he was a long-time member. Other papers show his work with many other government agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and with the Highway Research Board.

McFarland was active in the Aerospace Medical Association, the Human Factors Society, and a number of other professional and scientific societies. His collection includes minutes of meetings, correspondence, and other papers from the societies. He held both elected and appointed offices in many organizations.

In addition to the societies he joined, he was appointed to a number of boards and committees. There are papers from the Flight Safety Foundation, from the White House Conferences, and from many others.

Ross McFarland kept a detailed chronological list of conferences he attended and lectures he gave from 1951 to 1974. In the collection they are organized alphabetically by organization, and lecture titles are given where these are known. Some are represented by a full formal paper and for others there are only notes. This series includes talks to professional groups, to school groups, and his regular talks in the Harvard Chapel.

The Ross McFarland Collection contains a copy of almost everything that he wrote. There are copies of his three major books, as well as a large quantity of the resource material he used in writing them, including copies of his letters requesting information. The collection of his numbered reprints is complete, and there are additional unnumbered articles and manuscripts.

In the McFarland collection is a massive amount of general reference material. Dr. McFarland kept up an active exchange of reprints and reports. There are 39 archival boxes of unpublished reports and presentations from other people, plus 32 boxes of reprints of work published by others. These are not listed in the inventory. There are 31 boxes of miscellaneous sources that are arranged by subject, but not listed in the inventory.

Two major strengths of this collection are the completeness of the McFarland publications and the presence of much of his original research material. Additional strengths lie in the large number of unpublished reports and presentations from others which may not be available in other collections.

(Written by Roberta A. Ritchie, McFarland Collection Archivist)