THE DISCOVERER OF STREPTOMYCIN

Painstaking Research.

Sometimes medical discoveries are dramatic accidents. In other cases they are the result of years of painstaking research. Selman A. Waksman, a microbiologist, and his small group of assistants worked for years to unearth the new antibiotic, streptomycin, which comes from the soil. Their discovery set into motion a chain of events that led to the closing of many tuberculosis sanatoriums because there were no longer enough patients to keep them open.

Antibiotics from the Earth.

Waksman was born in Russia and at the age of twenty-two came to the United States. He graduated from Rutgers University and began his career in the field of science as a research assistant at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California. Studying the microbial inhabitants of the soil for thirty-nine years,...