Collection includes biographical materials, diaries, notes and poetry; correspondence (scientific and general), articles, reviews, lectures; syllabi and course materials; manuscripts (holograph and typescripts) of published and unpublished materials, student papers, and reprints. Another collection of Leake's papers exists at the National Library of Medicine.

Chauncy Depew Leake was born on September 5, 1896, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He received the Litt.B. degree from Princeton in 1917, having studied philosophy, chemistry and biology in a famous class that included such distinguished writers as John Peale Bishop, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson. When the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the New Jersey National Guard. He served in a machine gun company, where he rose to the rank of first sergeant, and later was transferred to the Chemical Warfare Service. After the war, he continued investigations he'd begun into war gases at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his M.S. (1920) and Ph.D. (1923) in pharmacology and physiology. At Wisconsin he also began teaching in the three areas that would occupy him throughout his career: he was an instructor in physiology (1920-1923), an assistant professor (1923-1925) and later associate professor (1925-1928) of pharmacology, and, beginning in 1921, he began teaching and writing on the history of science and medicine.

Collection is open for research.