Waksman, Selman Abraham

Selman Abraham Waksman, (born July 22, 1888, Priluka, Ukraine, Russian Empire [now Pryluky, Ukraine]—died August 16, 1973, Hyannis, Massachusetts, U.S.), Ukrainian-born American biochemist who was one of the world’s foremost authorities on soil microbiology. After the discovery of penicillin, he played a major role in initiating a calculated, systematic search for antibiotics among microbes. His screening methods and consequent codiscovery of the antibiotic streptomycin, the first specific agent effective in the treatment of tuberculosis, brought him the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

A naturalized U.S. citizen (1916), Waksman spent most of his career at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he served as professor of soil microbiology (1930–40), professor of microbiology and chairman of the department (1940–58), and director of the Rutgers Institute of Microbiology (1949–58). During his extensive study of the actinomycetes (filamentous, bacteria-like microorganisms found in the soil), he extracted from them antibiotics (a term he coined in 1941) valuable for their killing effect not only on gram-positive bacteria, such as the tubercle bacillus (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which unlike other gram-positive microbes is insensitive to penicillin), but also on gram-negative bacteria, such as the organisms that cause cholera (Vibrio cholerae) and typhoid fever (Salmonella typhi).

In 1940 Waksman, along with his graduate student H. Boyd Woodruff, isolated actinomycin from soil bacteria. Although the substance was effective against strains of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, including M. tuberculosis, it was extremely toxic when given to test animals. Four years later Waksman and graduate students Albert Schatz and Elizabeth Bugie published a paper describing their discovery of the relatively nontoxic streptomycin, which they extracted from the actinomycete Streptomyces griseus. They found that the antibiotic exercised repressive influence on tuberculosis. In combination with other chemotherapeutic agents, streptomycin has become a major factor in controlling the disease. Waksman also isolated and developed several other antibiotics, including neomycin, that have been used in treating many infectious diseases of humans, domestic animals, and plants.

Among Waksman’s books are Principles of Soil Microbiology (1927), regarded as one of the most exhaustive works on the subject, and My Life with the Microbes (1954), an autobiography.