Scope and Content Note
The papers of Thomas Eisner (1929-2011) span the years 1945-2011, with the bulk of the material dating from 1957 to 2008. Eisner was an authority on insect behavior, ecology, and evolution and is credited with co-founding chemical ecology, the discipline that melds biology and chemistry to reveal the chemical interactions of organisms with each other and the world at large. He is also known for his study of the defensive mechanism of bombardier beetles. Awards, correspondence, desk calendars, digital files, grants and projects, lecture abstracts, newspaper clippings, photographs, printed matter, publicity material, reports, slides, subject files, teaching material, testimonies, writings, and other miscellaneous material pertain to Eisner's career as a biologist and entomologist, including his tenure at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Also featured are his interests and activities relating to his advocacy of human rights and the conservation of endangered species and nature. The papers are in English and organized into the following five series: Correspondence, Subject File, Writings, Miscellany, and Slides.
The Correspondence series includes Eisner’s many exchanges with children, colleagues, government officials, professional organizations, students, and others. This series documents aspects of his career as a biologist and entomologist and provides insight into his advocacy of human rights, chemical prospecting, and conservation. An extensive file between Eisner and Jerrold Meinwald, a chemist and co-founder of chemical ecology, describes their numerous collaborations to understand the chemical languages of insects. The series is primarily professional in nature and includes exchanges of data with other biologists and updates on Eisner's projects and research. Material relating to Eisner’s tenure at Cornell University is found throughout the collection. Correspondents include F. M. Carpenter, James Elliott Carrel, Mark Deyrup, Paul R. Ehrlich, Bert Hölldobler, Daniel H. Janzen, Martin Lindauer, and Jerrold Meinwald. Because of its breadth, this series will overlap with other series in the collection. Correspondence from individuals such as Louis M. Roth, Miriam Rothschild, Robert E. Silberglied, and Edward O. Wilson are located in the Subject File series with other topical files Eisner amassed.
The Subject File series comprises a wide range of topical files highlighting Eisner's accomplishments, activities, interests, and work. Topics generally relate to biology, chemical ecology, chemical prospecting, conservation of endangered species and nature, entomology, and human rights. In 1991, Eisner helped to broker a deal between Merck & Co., a large pharmaceutical firm, and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Costa Rica, to facilitate chemical prospecting of Costa Rica’s biodiversity resources. Articles, correspondence, proposals, reports, and other papers in this series chronicle this event. Documentation of Eisner’s work relating to conservation and endangered species is extensive and ranges from his efforts to conserve Lignumvitae Key in Florida in the 1960s and 1970s and the Big Thicket region of Texas in the 1970s to files pertaining to his activities with scientists and members of the United States Congress to save the Endangered Species Act in 1995 and 1996. The range of activities relating to his advocacy of human rights include a large file on S. A. Kovalev, a Russian biologist arrested in 1974 in the Soviet Union for human rights activities. Also featured in this series are Eisner’s grant-funded projects to study the evolution and defensive systems of arthropods and material chronicling Eisner’s involvement in the founding of the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology in 1992.
The Subject File also contains video files. There is a video file for "Secret Weapons," an episode produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation for the television series Natural World. This episode originally aired in 1983 and was written by and featured Eisner. The episode won many awards, including the grand award in the science category at the New York Film and Television Festival. Video files are also available for Eisner’s other appearances on the Discovery Canada channel and Nature Watch series.
The Writings series consists of Eisner’s articles, books, essays, and papers along with writings by others about Eisner. There are seven bound volumes of Eisner’s published articles, essays, and papers from 1952 to 2008, in chronological order, as well as articles bound together according to subject. Topics on which Eisner wrote generally relate to biology, chemical ecology, and conservation and reflect his interest in deciphering how ants, bombardier beetles, caterpillars, cockroaches, fireflies, millipedes, spiders, and other arthropods and insects use chemical signals to attract mates, defend against predators, locate food, and protect their young. Correspondence, reviews, slides, and other material help to highlight Eisner's books For Love of Insects and Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures. For Love of Insects is considered Eisner's memoir of fifty years in the field, and the series includes an audio file of a radio discussion of this book in 2004.
The Miscellany and Slides series provide further documentation of Eisner's personal and professional activities. The Miscellany series includes material relating to Eisner’s academic career, accomplishments, engagements, and talks. Also included in the Miscellany series are digital files, including audio files of a bombardier beetle discharging a defensive and toxic secretion. Eisner was known for his nature photography and used pictures to illustrate concepts whenever possible. Photographs by Eisner of a variety of subjects are available in slide format. The Slides series includes images of a bombardier beetle ejecting a defensive spray, insects, maple leaves, plants, ultraviolet coloration and patterns, and the utetheisa ornatrix, a moth that uses an alkaloid chemical to make itself unpalatable.