Subject Files, 1936-1993

Materials include correspondence, reports, photographs, patent information, meeting notes, publications, university lecture notes and a dissertation.

Several files relate to Coles’ research with the Underwater Explosives Research Laboratory (UERL) at WHOI in the 1940’s. An unpublished report called “The Sign Test” provides an analysis of data and an outline of statistical methods for explosives research (f.3). Coles’ activity reports are scattered among the files from 1946-1948. Materials include Coles’ role as a member on the WHOI Trustee Committee for Educational Policy in the mid-1960s. Other materials of interest include Coles’ correspondence with WHOI director’s Paul Fye and John Steele relating to Coles’ presidency of WHOI’s Associate Program and his involvement with various committees of the WHOI Board of Trustees (f.12). Older materials include his undergraduate lecture notes and reports and Ph.D. dissertation from Columbia University, and correspondence relating to his job search in 1943 prior to working at WHOI’s UERL. The files also include information about establishing a graduate program in oceanography at Brown University (f.14); a journal review of a book, Physical Principles of Chemistry, which Coles co-authored with Robert H. Cole, a former WHOI scientist (f. 25); and a patent by Coles and Richard M. Brown on ‘Optical Device for Integrating Functions’ (f.18). The Waterways Experiment Station in Mississippi, for which Coles was a consultant, contains correspondence with Fye and others concerning a wave action study (f.16).