SELMAN WAKSMAN’S LIFE-SAVING LEGACY From Soil to Salvation
You don’t need to work in the pharmaceutical industry to know what antibiotics are, but it may surprise you that some of the earliest
University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry three years later.
his passing in 1973 and was named a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society in 1985. Naturally, the accolades didn’t end there. He was posthumously inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989, the same year as Albert Einstein, and received the same honor from the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005. The Waksman name’s relevance in the world of science did not end with Selman. His son, the late Byron H. Waksman, M.D., enjoyed an accomplished career as a research associate at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, an assistant professor at Harvard University Medical School and a professor of microbiology at Yale University Medical School. Like countless other innovators who’ve called New Jersey home, Selman Waksman gifted the world with pioneering work that reshaped science and medicine. More than a century after he first arrived in the U.S., his discoveries continue to save lives and prove that some of the most powerful medical breakthroughs can grow from the soil beneath our feet.
Returning to Rutgers, he served in a variety of roles at the university before being appointed head of the Microbiology Department in 1940. His investigations into
and most significant ones were discovered in the Garden State thanks to a Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian immigrant with the desire to revolutionize microbiology.
soil microbiology and the medicinal properties of soil organisms led him and his team to discover streptomycin , actinomycin , neomycin and candicidin . Notably more effective than penicillin in battling bacteria, streptomycin became a critical component in the treatment of tuberculosis, saving the lives of thousands. In 1951, using profits generated from his patents, he funded the creation of the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology and the construction of the Institute of Microbiology on Rutgers’ Busch Campus in Piscataway. The following year, he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The Institute was renamed in his honor following
Born near Kyiv in 1888, Selman Waksman is credited with both
coining the term “antibiotics” and developing groundbreaking treatments for tuberculosis. After years of private tutoring, he traveled to the U.S. in 1910 to further his educational ambitions and entered Rutgers College in New Brunswick the following year. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in 1915, he accepted an appointment to serve as a research assistant in soil bacteriology at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station while continuing his graduate studies. In 1916, he earned a Master of Science degree from Rutgers and became a U.S. citizen. It was around this time that he traveled to the
Talking Medicines Clear Communication for Market Connections
Philip Crowley of Crowley Law LLC with Talking Medicines founders Scott Crae, Elizabeth Fairley and Jo Halliday
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