Selman Waksman and Antibiotics Selman Waksman and Antibiotics

You are here: » American Chemical Society » Education » Explore Chemistry » Chemical Landmarks » Selman Waksman and Antibiotics Selman Waksman and Antibiotics National Historic Chemical Landmark Dedicated May 24, 2005, at Rutgers The State University of New Jersey. Commemorative Booklet (PDF) Waksman and his students, in their laboratory at Rutgers University, established the first screening protocols to detect antimicrobial agents produced by microorganisms. This deliberate search for chemotherapeutic agents contrasts with the discovery of penicillin, which came through a chance observation by Alexander Fleming, who noted that a mold contaminant on a Petri dish culture had inhibited the growth of a bacterial pathogen. During the 1940s, Waksman and his students isolated more than fifteen antibiotics, the most famous of which was streptomycin, the first effective treatment for tuberculosis. Contents Selman Waksman’s Early Years Waksman Moves to America Waksman’s Research on Actinomycetes, and the Search for Antibiotics The Trials of Streptomycin Bringing Streptomycin to Market Controversy over the Discovery of Streptomycin Selman Waksman’s Later Years Research Notes and Further Reading Landmark Designation and Acknowledgments Cite this Page “Selman Waksman and Antibiotics” commemorative booklet produced by the National Historic Chemical Landmarks program of the American Chemical Society in 2005 (PDF). "The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them." — Ecclesiasticus, xxxviii, 41 Selman Waksman’s Early Life Selman Waksman called his autobiography My Life with the Microbes. That is also the title of the first chapter of the book, which begins "I have devoted my life to the study of microbes, those infinitesimal forms of life which play such important roles in the life of man, animals, and plants. I have studied their nature, life processes, and their relation to man, helping him and destroying him… I have contemplated the destructive capacities of some microbes and the constructive activities of others. I have tried to find ways and means for discouraging the first and encouraging the second."2 It was a particular kind of microbe found in the soil that intrigued Waksman: the actinomycetes, a group of microorganisms closely related to bacteria. During his long career studying actinomycetes, Waksman realized that many of these microorganisms could inhibit the growth of other microorganisms. That led to the systematic search, starting in the late 1930s, for antimicrobial agents to fight disease, a search made critical by the approach of war. Selman Abraham Waksman was born and raised in the small town of Novaya-Priluka3 in Ukraine on July 22, 1888 (July 8 according to the old Russian calendar). Waksman described his birthplace as "a bleak town, a mere dot in the boundless steppes." In summer the endless fields produced wheat, rye, barley, and oats. In winter the steppes were blanketed in snow. "The earth was black, giving rise to the very name for that type of soil, tchernozem, or black earth. The soil was highly productive, yielding numerous crops, grown continuously for many years, without diminishing returns."4 While the Waksmans were town dwellers, typical of Jews in the Russian Empire, the fertility of the soil no doubt influenced the young boy's later career choice. Waksman was named for Solomon, the Kings of Kings, which in Russia had been corrupted over the centuries to Zolmin. His father, Jacob, was a pious man who earned a modest living renting out small houses he owned in neighboring villages. Tending his properties was not a fulltime job; accordingly, he filled his days with prayer and study in the local synagogue. In his autobiography, Waksman described his father's influence upon him as "that of a storyteller" full of tales of wise men who lived in ancient times and of the long history of the Jewish people. Father and son were not close: "He was always in the shadow and did not play that profound part in the life of my boyhood that fathers usually do in the lives of their sons."5 The formative influences on the young Waksman were his mother, Fraida, and her family. His mother was learned, especially for a woman of that period and place. She knew Yiddish literature, had enough knowledge of Hebrew to read scriptures, and could speak Ukrainian. All that served her well, because shortly after she was married, her husband was conscripted into the army. Forced to be independent, she depended on a small dry goods business for income. This thriving business served not only the town of Novaya-Priluka, but also surrounding villages, to which she transported goods on market days. In time, Fraida's mother and sisters came to live with the family, reinforcing the matriarchal environment in which Selman was raised. Waksman had one sister, Miriam, who died as a young child from diphtheria. She might have survived, but a shipment of antitoxin from Kiev, about two hundred miles away, arrived too late to save her life. Waksman later described how her tragic and unnecessary death influenced him. "As I watched her die," he wrote, "my childish and observant mind may have speculated on the possible effect of the curative agents upon the disease and the potential salvation of her life. Here, for the first time, I was brought in contact with a problem that was later to receive much of my attention."6 At the age of five, Waksman entered the local cheder, or religious school. The education stressed Jewish studies, with the melamed teaching the rudiments of reading scripture and the intricacies of prayer. Within two years, Waksman came under the tutelage of a more advanced teacher who emphasized the prophets and then the Talmud, whose complex interpretations provided the bulk of the intellectual diet. But his mother worried about the limitations of such a parochial education, so she hired private tutors who instructed the ten-year-old boy in Hebrew and Russian as well as literature, history, arithmetic, and geography. While there were holes in his education, Waksman claimed that by the age of thirteen he had a thorough knowledge of biblical and Talmudic writings and of Russian language and literature. In addition to his own studies, Waksman from the age of ten tutored local students, first in the rudiments of reading and writing and later to help prepare the children of the wealthy for entrance into various schools. As a Jew in the waning days of the Russian Empire, Waksman's access to higher education was limited. He was forced to become what was known as an extern, a student who studied with private tutors and then presented himself at a government-run school to take formal examinations. Upon passing this examination a student received a diploma which conferred all the rights and privileges of regular students. This Waksman successfully did in the larger cities of Zhitomir and Odessa. But following the death of his mother, Waksman decided to forego applying to a university in Russia and instead to follow the example of a number of his relatives and immigrate to the United States. This decision was made easier by the deteriorating status of Jews following the abortive 1905 revolution. The Tsarist government responded to this unrest by employing the age-old tactic of diverting attention from the iniquities of Russian society by whipping up anti-Semitic sentiment among the peasantry. The result was a series of pogroms aimed at Jewish life and property. Back to top Waksman Moves to America Waksman sailed to Philadelphia in 1910 and quickly departed for Metuchen, New Jersey, where he moved in with a cousin who had a small truck farm which also had a poultry plant. He spent his first few months in America on the farm, becoming familiar with problems of animal nutrition, composting stable manure, and germinating seeds. This appears to have reinforced his interest in the chemical reactions of living bodies, but he had little idea of how to organize such a study. At the suggestion of his cousin, he visited nearby Rutgers College. There he met Dr. Jacob Lipman, a fellow immigrant from Russia, who advised him to abandon an earlier interest in medical school. Instead, Lipman persuaded him that an agricultural curriculum would provide a better training. He soon enrolled at Rutgers, where he took accelerated course work and spent his fourth year on a research assignment assaying bacteria in culture samples from soil layers. It was while working on this project that Waksman found himself drawn to a particular kind of filamentous bacteria, the actinomycetes. These microorganisms became the focus of his masters' thesis at Rutgers and his doctorate, which he received from the University of California at Berkeley. They were, of course, to be his life's work, although it would be more than two decades before he investigated the possibility of using these microbes to fight other microbes. In 1916 Waksman became a U.S. citizen and married Deborah Mitnick, affectionately known as Boboli; she came from the same village in Ukraine as he. They would eventually have a son, Byron Halsted Waksman, named after one of his Rutgers' mentors. The first two years of their marriage were spent in Berkeley where Waksman supplemented his graduate fellowship with work for an industrial medical organization, Cutter Laboratories. This relationship established a pattern that was to prove useful in the future but which also led to some embarrassment. He returned to Rutgers in 1918 as a Lecturer in Soil Microbiology at the college and Microbiologist at the Agricultural Station. He had asked for this title because he was not so much interested in bacteria as in the fungi and actinomycetes among the microorganisms. The broader description of microbiologist would prove to be more apt than the narrower one of bacteriologist as Waksman began his life's work.

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