Waksman, Selman Abraham WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY588•
agent effective against gram-positive bacteria (bacteria that hold
dye in a stain test named for Danish bacteriologist Hans Gram).
Waksman became an associate professor at Rutgers in the
mid–1920s and advanced to the rank of full professor in 1930.
During the 1930s Waksman systematically investigated
the complex web of microbial life in soil, humus, and peat. He
was recognized as a leader in the field of soil microbiology,
and his work stimulated an ever-growing group of graduate
students and postdoctoral assistants. He continued to publish
widely, and he established many professional relationships
with industrial firms that utilized products of microbes. These
companies that produced enzymes, pharmaceuticals, vitamins,
and other products were later to prove valuable in Waksman’s
researches, mass-producing and distributing the products he
developed. Among his other accomplishments during this
period was the founding of the division of Marine
Bacteriology at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in- For the next decade he spent summers there and even-
tually became a trustee, a post he filled until his death.
In 1939, Waksman was appointed chair of the U.S. War
Committee on Bacteriology. He derived practical applications
from his earlier studies on soil microorganisms, developing
antifungal agents to protect soldiers and their equipment. He
also worked with the Navy on the problem of bacteria that
attacked ship hulls. Early that same year Dubos announced his
finding of two antibacterial substances, tyrocidine, and gram-
icidin, derived from a soil bacterium (Bacillus brevis). The lat-
ter compound, effective against gram-positive bacteria,
proved too toxic for human use but did find widespread
employment against various bacterial infections in veterinary
medicine. The discovery of gramicidin also evidently inspired
Waksman to dedicate himself to focus on the medicinal uses
of antibacterial soil microbes. It was in this period that he
began rigorously investigating the antibiotic properties of a
wide range of soil fungi.
Waksman set up a team of about 50 graduate students
and assistants to undertake a systematic study of thousands of
different soil fungi and other microorganisms. The rediscovery
at this time of the power of penicillinagainst gram-positive
bacteria likely provided further incentive to Waksman to find
an antibiotic effective against gram-negative bacteria, which
include the kind that causes tuberculosis.
In 1940, Waksman became head of Rutgers’ department
of microbiology. In that year too, with the help of Boyd
Woodruff, he isolated the antibiotic actinomycin. Named for
the actinomycetes (rod- or filament-shaped bacteria) from
which it was isolated, this compound also proved too toxic for
human use, but its discovery led to the subsequent finding of
variant forms (actinomycin A, B, C, and D), several of which
were found to have potent anti-cancer effects. Over the next
decade Waksman isolated 10 distinct antibiotics. It is
Waksman who first applied the term antibiotic, which literally
means against life, to such drugs.
Among these discoveries, Waksman’s finding of strepto-
mycin had the largest and most immediate impact. Not only did
streptomycin appear nontoxic to humans, however, it was
highly effective against gram-negative bacteria. (Prior to this
time, the antibiotics available for human use had been active
only against the gram-positive strains.) The importance of strep-
tomycin was soon realized. Clinical trials showed it to be effec-
tive against a wide range of diseases, most notably tuberculosis.
At the time of streptomycin’s discovery, tuberculosis
was the most resistant and irreversible of all the major infec-
tious diseases. It could only be treated with a regime of rest
and nutritious diet. The tuberculosis bacillus consigned its vic-
tims to a lifetime of invalidism and, when it invaded organs
other than the lungs, often killed. Sanatoriums around the
country were filled with persons suffering the ravages of
tuberculosis, and little could be done for them.
Streptomycin changed all of that. From the time of its
first clinical trials in 1944, it proved to be remarkably effective
against tuberculosis, literally snatching sufferers back from
the jaws of death. By 1950, streptomycin was used against
seventy different germs that were not treatable with penicillin.
Among the diseases treated by streptomycin were bacterial
meningitis(an inflammationof membranes enveloping the
brain and spinal cord), endocarditis (an inflammation of the
lining of the heart and its valves), pulmonary and urinary tract
infections, leprosy, typhoid fever, bacillary dysentery,
cholera, and bubonic plague.
Waksman arranged to have streptomycin produced by a
number of pharmaceutical companies, since demand for it
soon skyrocketed beyond the capacity of any single company.
Manufacture of the drug became a $50-million-per-year
industry. Thanks to Waksman and streptomycin, Rutgers
received millions of dollars of income from the royalties.
Waksman donated much of his own share to the establishment
of an Institute of Microbiology there. He summarized his early
researches on the drug in Streptomycin: Nature and Practical
Applications(1949). Streptomycin ultimately proved to have
some human toxicity and was supplanted by other antibiotics,Selman Waksman won the 1952 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine
for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against
the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.womi_W 5/7/03 10:17 AM Page 588