Scope and Content Note
The papers of Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903-1967) span the period 1920-2006, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1950-1967. The collection consists of diaries, correspondence, writings, research files, and miscellaneous material relating to Pincus's life and career, especially his role in developing and testing the contraceptive pill. The papers are organized into nine series: Diaries; Personal Correspondence; Professional Correspondence; Speech, Article, and Book File; Research Material; Notebooks; Financial Papers; Miscellany; and Addition. The largest portion of the collection, the Professional Correspondence series, is compartmented into four subseries: General File, G. D. Searle & Company File, Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center File, and Grants File.
Prominent in the General File subseries of the Professional Correspondence are materials pertaining to the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, which Pincus helped found, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Among the studies documented are projects conducted by Pincus in Haiti and Puerto Rico while developing and testing the oral contraceptive. Correspondence and reports concern the women who participated in the project and note their experiences, side effects, and thoughts and feelings about the contraceptive pill. Significant correspondents include Alberto Ercoli, Celso-Ramon Garcia, Mary Lasker, Katherine Dexter McCormick, Edris Rice-Wray, Hector Rocamora, John Rock, and Margaret Sanger.
Files relating to the G. D. Searle & Company, which manufactured most of the compounds investigated by Pincus in the search for the oral contraceptives, document his relationship with Searle from as early as 1942, including research projects that predate its association with the pill. The files are primarily correspondence and include related material. The Grants File subseries of the Professional Correspondence documents the range of research grants provided Pincus and his staff from many sources.
Also in the collection are data files and experiment books kept by Pincus, the reports of his staff at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and manuscripts and correspondence relating to the many articles he wrote concerning the results of his research. The chronological arrangement of the Research Material series reveals the development of his interests and the thrust of his research at different periods in his life. The volume of writings in the Speech, Article, and Book File on the topic of the contraceptive pill suggests the importance of this development and some of the controversy which surrounded it.
The Diaries series contains two volumes, one from 1920, with original poetry, recounting the thoughts and experiences of Pincus as a youth of sixteen, and the other, from a few months in 1941, describe the research in which he was engaged and prospects for the future.
The Addition includes writings by Pincus; correspondence; glass slides containing data and results of fertility control experiments, clinical trials, and control groups in the form of tables, graphs, and charts; a scrapbook of newspaper clippings related to the birth control pill; and other papers.