Description
Collection includes biographical materials, diaries, notes and poetry; correspondence (scientific and general), articles,
reviews, lectures; syllabi and course materials; manuscripts (holograph and typescripts) of published and unpublished materials,
student papers, and reprints. Another collection of Leake's papers exists at the National Library of Medicine.
Background
Chauncy Depew Leake was born on September 5, 1896, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He received the Litt.B. degree from Princeton
in 1917, having studied philosophy, chemistry and biology in a famous class that included such distinguished writers as John
Peale Bishop, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson. When the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the New Jersey
National Guard. He served in a machine gun company, where he rose to the rank of first sergeant, and later was transferred
to the Chemical Warfare Service. After the war, he continued investigations he'd begun into war gases at the University of
Wisconsin, where he earned his M.S. (1920) and Ph.D. (1923) in pharmacology and physiology. At Wisconsin he also began teaching
in the three areas that would occupy him throughout his career: he was an instructor in physiology (1920-1923), an assistant
professor (1923-1925) and later associate professor (1925-1928) of pharmacology, and, beginning in 1921, he began teaching
and writing on the history of science and medicine.