Finding Aid
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Papers of Harold W. Beams Access and Restrictions: This collection is open for research. Digital Surrogates: Except where indicated, this document describes but does not reproduce the actual text, images and objects which make up this collection. Materials are available only in the Special Collections Department. Copyright: Please read The University of Iowa Libraries' statement on Property Rights, Copyright Law, and Permissions to Use Unpublished Materials. Use of Collections: The University of Iowa Libraries supports access to the materials, published and unpublished, in its collections. Nonetheless, access to some items may be restricted by their fragile condition or by contractual agreement with donors, and it may not be possible at all times to provide appropriate machinery for reading, viewing or accessing non-paper-based materials. Please read our Use of Manuscripts Statement. Acquisition and Processing Information: These materials were transferred to the University Archives by the Biology Department in January 1998. Finding aid posted to the Internet November 2010. |
Harold W. Beams, March 29, 1968 Frederick W. Kent Collection of Photographs |
Scope and Contents
The papers of Harold W. Beams include correspondence, grant folders, manuscripts, notebooks, photographs, and reprints dated 1927 to 1987 on his cytology research, electron microscopy, and Golgi bodies. Collaborators and correspondents include Richard G. Kessel, Robert L. King, and Fritiof S. Sjöstrand.
Biographical Note
Harold William Beams was born August 3, 1903, in Belle Plaine, Kansas. In 1925 he received a B. A. degree in biology at Fairmount College (later named Wichita State University) and received his M.A. in zoology from Northwestern University the following year. He took the Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin in 1929.
Beams' was appointed assistant professor of zoology at the State University of Iowa in 1930 and was named full professor in 1939. His research in cell biology (cytology) was broad. Beams had an older brother, Jesse W. Beams, a physicist at the University of Virginia, who invented the air turbine ultracentrifuge. Harold utilized his brother's invention in his own research with Robert L. King in 1934 to settle a controversy over whether the Golgi Apparatus was real or artifact. Among the 150 papers Beams published was a review article on the Golgi apparatus, which appeared in the International Review of Cytology in 1968.
Beams was the recipient of an award by the Iowa Microbeam Society for his ground-breaking work in electron microscopy, having published his first studies on this topic in 1949. The Carver/Harold W. Beams Distinguished Professorship was established at the University of Iowa in 1989.
Following his retirement in 1971, Beams continued his research. His laboratory was housed within the Biology Annex, later named the Sciences Library.
Beams married Mona K. Murphy in July 1935 and they had a son, David, and a daughter, Marilyn. Harold Beams died January 26, 1992.
[D. Anderson; 11/2010]
Related Materials
Folder, "Beams, Harold W.," Faculty and Staff Vertical Files collection (RG 01.15.03)
Beams, Harold W. "Oral History Interview." University of Iowa Oral History Project, 25. 49 pp. 1976 (RG 01.06)
Lee, Arthur Bolles; Harold W. Beams; J. (James) Brontë Gatenby. The Microtonmist's Vade Mecum; A Handbook of the Methods of Animal and Plant Microscopic Technique. London: J. & A. Churchill, 1950.
Phillips, Lincoln Ramsey. "What No Longer Exists, for Example: the Beams Lab, Biology Annex." M.S. thesis, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1998. This is a photo essay of the Beams Lab following a period of discontinued use.
Papers of Michael Solursh (RG 99.0195)
Box Contents List
Box 1
Reprints, 1927-1950
Reprints, 1951-1961 [includes some photographs]
Reprints, 1962-1987
Beams cited in works of other researchers, 1930-1955
Beams bibliography [incomplete], 1930-1968
Symposiums, seminars, society meetings, 1958-1963
Photographs
[1965?]
n.d.
Research manuscripts [includes some photographs], 1956-1969
Box 5
Research manuscripts, 1970-1984
Box 6
S. U. I. course notes, [1967?]
Correspondence
Broseghini, Albert L., 1958
Danielli, F. R. S., 1965-1966
Flexner, Louis B. [includes Beams' biography of Frank A. Stromsten], 1959
Hadek, R., 1958-1959
Hancher, Virgil M., 1958
Kessel, Richard, 1961
Beams to Kessel, offer of position, 1961
Beams recommendation of Kessel to two positions and Kessel's vita, 1958; 1964; 1972
King, Robert L., 1965
Lacy, Dennis, 1956
Laster, Howard, 1980
Loehwing, W. F., 1958
Macleod, A. Garrand, 1958
Randall, J. T., 1958
Sjöstrand, Fritiof S., 1963
Requests for reprints, 1953; 1958; 1965
Thesis committee in Egypt, 1958
Box 7
Correspondence
Editors and publishers, 1961-1985
Suppliers, 1958-1967
Notes
Box 8
Grant applications and progress reports, 1966-1988
National Science Foundation grant guidelines; grant funding receipts, 1979-1982
