The Elmer V. McCollum & Harry G. Day Collection comprises materials gathered together by Day in the process of writing what he hoped would be a definitive biography of his mentor, Elmer V. McCollum. The biography was part of a larger effort by Day to commemorate Elmer V. McCollum’s life and work which he considered a key component of the early history of nutrition research and nutrition science. Over time, Day came to feel that many researchers in the field did not know about the early history or about McCollum’s extensive contributions to the field. He was concerned that the knowledge of both that history and of important findings about nutrition had managed to escape widespread notice. Day wrote several shorter biographies of McCollum that were published in journals. Although he drafted several chapters of the manuscript, the book-length work was never published. While the majority of the collection materials pertain to the life and work of McCollum, including materials pertaining to his second wife, Ernestine McCollum, and his family life, there is also a group of Day’s own records.
The collection contains a variety of documents including publications by Day, McCollum, and others; articles and biographical memoirs about E. V. McCollum; bibliography pertaining to McCollum; people and subject files; professional and personal correspondence; papers; drafts of chapters of Day’s biography manuscript; awards; financial documents; McCollum’s notes, notebooks, and scrapbooks; clippings from newspapers, journals, and magazines; an extensive set of photographs; and audio tapes of interviews with McCollum.