certificate

mislabeled photo; this appears to be "left to right: Merrill L. Tribe, Mary Elizabeth Hickox Mandels (1917-2009), and Dale Sieling"
"Left to right: Brig. Gen. Merrill L. Tribe, microbiologist Mary Elizabeth Hickox Mandels (1917-2009), and Dale Sieling. Mandels was a leader in bioenergy research and, during her long career at the U.S. Army Natick Research Laboratory in Massachusetts, she headed the Army's national bioconversion studies. She is shown receiving the 1962 Research Directors Award at the Quartermaster Research and Engineering Center"

Very detailed Mary Elizabeth Hickox Mandels obituary:
www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/content/2/1/22
Married to fellow Cornell-trained scientist Gabriel Mandels (d. 1981).

Merrill Tribe's obituary, from 1991:
www.deseretnews.com/article/140733/DEATH--MERRILL-L-TRIBE...

Thanks, Penny. Fixed!

BG Tribe must have retired from the Army in 1964, not 1954, as noted in his obituary.

Why so blue?

Smithsonian here. Here's a little more about cyanotypes. You can find more descriptions of phtoographic media in our search- photography.si.edu Cyanotype Sir John Herschel invented the process for printing a cyanotype—more commonly known as a blueprint—in 1842. Creating a cyanotype involved developing prepared paper with an iron-salt solution. After treating the paper with ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferriyanide, a photographer would place a negative, or even a drawing, on top of it in direct sunlight, causing the exposed parts of the paper to turn bright blue from the effects of the iron. Subsequently submerging the print in water caused the image to become fixed and the unexposed chemicals to wash away, and the iron’s oxidation caused the blue image to intensify. Engineers and architects favored this process for copying drawings because it was stable, efficient, and inexpensive. Thomas Smillie, the Smithsonian’s first photographer, employed this printing method to keep track of his glass-plate negatives. He made and cataloged cyanotypes of each image, after which he stored the corresponding glass-plate negative.

S. P. Langley (who signed this check) was the 3rd Secretary of the Smithsonian (1887-1906) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley

i think this document is mis-tagged because it is exactly the same as this one : www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/4100761011/ where it is called "Travel Document for the Schooner Syrena Permitting Transport from Africa to Havana, Cuba, 1817"

Thanks for the head's up- we're looking into it! Kristen (U.S. National Archives)