Selman Waksman

Selman Waksman (1888-1973), Russian-born American microbiologist and Nobel laureate, who discovered streptomycin. Waksman was born in Priluki, Ukraine, but emigrated to the United States in 1910 and became an American citizen in 1916. Educated at Rutgers University and the University of California, he joined the faculty of Rutgers in 1918. In 1958 he was named Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Director Emeritus of the Institute of Microbiology, of which he had been director since its creation in 1949. He was also a marine bacteriologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1930-1942), a microbiologist at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (1921-1954), and a consultant to several federal agencies.

Waksman started research into soil micro-organisms at an early age, and his experiments on antibacterial moulds resulted in the announcement of the discovery in 1944 of streptomycin, to which he was the first to apply the term antibiotic. For this discovery he was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He also discovered and developed several other antibiotic agents. He wrote more than 20 books, including Enzymes (1926), Principles of Soil Microbiology (1927), and My Life with the Microbes (1954).