Selman Abraham Waksman

Biochemist

  • Born: July 22, 1888
  • Birthplace: Priluka, Russia (now in Ukraine)
  • Died: August 16, 1973
  • Place of death: Hyannis, Massachusetts

Russian-born American biochemist

Waksman’s painstaking research into the nature of soil microorganisms, culminating in the discovery of streptomycin, helped to bring about the antibiotic age.

Areas of achievement Biochemistry, physiology, medicine

Early Life

Selman Abraham Waksman (WAHKS-mehn) was born in Priluka, a small, bleak Ukrainian town in what was then Russia, some two hundred miles from Kiev. His parents, Jacob and Fradia Waksman, were Russian-Jewish; his mother ran a dry-goods business, and his father’s time was spent in managing his property and in study and attending synagogue.

Russia in the late nineteenth century was a place of poverty and prejudice. Waksman, however, remembered his childhood as a time of love and faith; his mother made considerable sacrifices to give him an education. At the age of five, Waksman entered a cheder, a private religious school; by the age of seven, he was studying Talmud, and at nine, he was entrusted to Jewish tutors knowledgeable not only in Talmud but also in Russian literature, history, arithmetic, and geography. What he learned, Waksman passed on to others; he taught eagerly in an unlicensed school that was regularly harassed by the czarist police.

The religious quotas of czarist Russia barred Waksman from the gymnasiums, which were the only institutions in which a secondary education could be obtained. Any individual who could pass monthlong competitive examinations, however, could earn a certificate that indicated that his level of knowledge was equivalent to that taught in the gymnasium. In 1907, at the age of nineteen, Waksman made his first attempt to obtain this valuable certificate. Although unsuccessful at the first attempt a hostile examiner questioned him on the river that flows through Berlin (the Spree) he succeeded in 1909 in obtaining the credentials.

His mother, however, had recently died, and with her, Waksman’s ties to the Ukraine were gone as well. Some cousins had emigrated to the United States; one was a farmer in New Jersey who offered to board the young Waksman if he would emigrate. Although Waksman had won admission to the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich, he headed for the United States in 1910. After leaving the Ukraine in a train headed for the German border, he traveled from Bremen to Philadelphia in the steerage of an ocean liner. Waksman arrived in the United States on November 2, 1910, where his relative gave him a warm welcome.

Although he had never been in a scientific laboratory, Waksman determined that he would study biology or medicine. His gymnasium certificate allowed him admission to the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, but he was without financial aid. Rutgers University, a state school in New Jersey, however, could offer the young immigrant not only a state scholarship but also the tutelage of Jacob G. Lipman, head of the bacteriology department at the College of Agriculture and also a Russian immigrant.

Entering Rutgers in 1911, Waksman was at first uncomfortable in the American university. He met his living expenses by working as a greenhouse assistant, earning twenty cents per hour, living in a three-dollar-per-month room in the college farmhouse, and eating cracked eggs at eleven cents per dozen.

Life’s Work

Waksman’s scientific career began during his undergraduate years at Rutgers. There, his fascination with the soil and earth began as he saw in a mere patch of earth a world teeming with life and energy. Waksman’s senior project involved the enumeration of the organisms in the soil, and it was at about this time that he first came on the microorganisms known as actinomyces. Even experts then knew little about the biology and chemistry of these microorganisms and about the roles these microscopic creatures played in the world of the soil. It was these actinomyces that ultimately were to be the source of some of the first major antibiotics.

Waksman received a bachelor of science degree in agriculture (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1915 from Rutgers, and was appointed research assistant in soil bacteriology under Lipman at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (a state-subsidized research facility). He continued to carry on graduate work at Rutgers, earning his master of science degree in 1916. In February of 1916, his first scientific paper was published. During this time, Waksman was granted United States citizenship and married the sister of a close friend from Priluka, Deborah Mitnik.

For his doctoral studies, Waksman accepted a fellowship offer from the University of California, Berkeley. There, he received a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1918, working at Cutter Laboratories as well during the latter part of his tenure. He returned to Rutgers in July, 1918, taking a double position as lecturer in soil microbiology and microbiologist at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.

Waksman’s firmly held scientific opinion was not only that it was the bacteria that played an important role in the microscopic worlds but also that the actinomyces, fungi, and other microbes had to be considered of equal importance. Waksman firmly but diplomatically pressed his views at scientific meetings and in learned journals. Slowly, recognition came. He was made associate professor at Rutgers in 1925 and professor in 1929. His monographs were eagerly read by workers in the field, and his huge textbook, Principles of Soil Microbiology, which was published in 1927, became accepted as a classic resource.

It was during this time that one of Waksman’s students, René J. Dubos, a Frenchman who had worked with Waksman on the decomposition of cellulose by soil bacteria, was able in 1932 to isolate a soil microorganism that produced an enzyme that digested pneumonia organisms. Somewhat later, in 1938, Dubos found in enriched soil a bacterium active against several disease-causing organisms. Isolating the active chemicals, Dubos termed the drug tyrothricin. Although tyrothricin was itself of limited usefulness, it showed the way for the development of other antibiotics.

Following Dubos’s success, other scientists, particularly Baron Florey and Ernst B. Chain at Oxford, developed new antibiotics. Florey and Chain resurrected penicillin, which had actually been discovered more than a decade earlier by Alexander Fleming of London. With the beginning of World War II, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American pharmaceutical industry threw their weight into the development of penicillin, and by the end of World War II, enough penicillin was being produced to treat at least seven million patients.

It was at about this time that Waksman was called on by the editor of Biological Abstracts to coin a word to describe these new “wonder drugs” that were cropping up in the professional literature. Waksman came up with the term “antibiotic,” defining it as a chemical substance produced by a microbe that has the capacity to inhibit the growth of and even to destroy other microbes.

Waksman watched the development of penicillin from the sidelines, although with interest and enthusiasm. He still thought of himself as a soil microbiologist, devoted to the study of soils, composts, peat, and manure piles. With the way lighted by Dubos’s 1938 success, however, Waksman was determined to isolate his own antibiotics, using the principles developed during years of research. Subsidized by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and by Merck and Company, he searched for disease-inhibiting chemicals produced by soil microorganisms. He turned to the actinomyces, those soil microorganisms that had so fascinated him from early in his career, with the certainty that they would prove to be a productive source of powerful new drugs. Indeed, by this time, he had already shown that as many as 20 percent to 50 percent of the actinomyces produced substances that had the ability to inhibit the growth of other microorganisms.

By 1940, Waksman had isolated his first antibiotic. Christened actinomycin, the drug had a wonderful capacity to destroy microbes but was toxic to experimental animals. Although then considered far too toxic to be used, a later modification of this chemical, actinomycin D (dactinomycin) continues to be employed in the treatment of cancer.

Waksman’s laboratory undertook a comprehensive program of screening the actinomyces for their ability to produce antibiotics. Early isolates did not pass muster. In 1942, however, streptothricin seemed to show great promise. It seemed to kill infectious organisms and leave the experimental animals alive and well. However, disappointment soon set in: Streptothricin had a delayed fatal effect that killed the experimental animals after the bacterial disease was cured.

The good news came in August, 1943. From two strains of streptomyces griseus, Waksman and his students isolated a substance that they dubbed streptomycin. This substance had a deadly effect on the tuberculosis bacilli. Streptomycin was also effective against the microorganisms causing dysentery, typhoid, plague, cholera, and certain types of meningitis and pneumonia, although it was later superseded by other, more effective, drugs. Waksman was also responsible for the discovery of neomycin, an antibiotic used to protect against infection of wounds. In later years, other investigators derived from Waksman’s actinomyces a number of additional antibiotics. Following Waksman’s discovery, Merck and Company embarked on a crash program to develop and market streptomycin. By 1946, it was used worldwide, revolutionizing the treatment of tuberculosis. The discovery of this antibiotic, one of the first to be developed and marketed, led the way to the conquest of numerous diseases not before amenable to treatment.

Streptomycin brought Waksman both honors and public acclaim. He was awarded honorary degrees by twenty-two universities. In 1952, Waksman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His Nobel address described the painstaking work that, in Waksman’s own words, had brought the “conquest of the Great White Plague, undreamt of less than ten years ago . . . now virtually within sight.”

The discovery also made Waksman very rich. Waksman declined the greater part of his royalties, endowing the Foundation for Microbiology, a nonprofit corporation devoted to fostering research in microbiology. Patents were assigned to a Rutgers foundation that endowed the Rutgers Institute of Microbiology, founded in 1949 and headed by Waksman until his retirement in 1958. Following the scientist’s death, the institution became known as the Waksman Institute.

Photographs of the Nobel laureate show a small, stocky man peering curiously at the world through shell-rimmed glasses. Despite fame and fortune, Waksman remained devoted not only to his science but also to his students. He noted in his autobiography that he owed his success not so much to what he taught his students but to what they taught him: Dubos was one notable example. Waksman liked to paraphrase the words of an ancient Talmudic scholar, remarking,

I can truthfully say that I owe much to my professors, that I owe more to my colleagues, but that I owe most to my students, of whom I had a brilliant array. What greater joy can there be, in discussing certain scientific accomplishments, than to point to all these former students and say, “I have helped in shaping the minds of these so that they could become what they are today.”

Waksman retired from his chair as head of the institute in 1958 but maintained an office and small laboratory at Rutgers. He died in 1973, survived by his wife, Deborah Waksman, and a son, Byron Waksman, also a professor of microbiology.

Significance

The development of antibiotics revolutionized medical science. Waksman’s 1943 discovery of streptomycin, combined with the development of penicillin during the same era, meant that once-fatal bacterial diseases were curable. Tuberculosis, the feared “consumption” of the nineteenth century, was no longer as frightening; it could now be readily treated with streptomycin.

Streptomycin, although still used in combination with other drugs in the management of tuberculosis, has been to some extent superseded by newer antibiotics. However, the principles by which it was developed the painstaking analysis of substances produced by naturally occurring microorganisms formed the bedrock on which the research that led to the development of even more effective drugs was based.

Waksman exemplified the man of science, devoted to teaching and research and to the painstaking analysis of a given problem. His study of soil microorganisms came to fruition when the actinomyces that he first noticed during his early student days at Rutgers proved to be the source of the valuable antibiotic streptomycin.

With the development of antibiotics such as streptomycin and penicillin, as well as those that came later, health and longevity became the norm rather than the exception.

Waksman’s life shows that the promise of America for the early twentieth century immigrant was not merely a myth. A Russian Jew, fleeing prejudice and poverty, he arrived in the United States in 1910. Educated at a state university, he took the resources at hand the soil on which he stood and transformed it into the “wonder drugs” of modern, scientific medicine.

Bibliography

Carter, Richard. “Miracle Man of Wonder Drugs.” In Nine Who Chose America. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959. An excellent overview of Waksman’s early life and later achievements, stressing Waksman’s immigrant origins (part of a Life series on great immigrants).

Daniel, Thomas M. Pioneers of Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2000. Focuses on six people, including Waksman, whose discoveries had a significant impact on tuberculosis.

“Obituary: Selman A. Waksman.” The New York Times, August 17, 1973, p. 1. This article-length overview of Waksman’s life is a useful source of information where few sources exist.

“Selman Abraham Waksman, Ph.D.” Journal of the American Medical Association 282, no. 11 (September 15, 1999): 1030. Profile of Waksman, including information about his education, discovery of streptomycin and its impact on tuberculosis, and his receipt of the Nobel Prize.

Waksman, Selman A. My Life with the Microbes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954. Waksman’s autobiography. Although stylistically somewhat awkward, it is a major source of information on the scientist’s life and work. To some extent a typical immigrant success story, it is redeemed by its honesty and sincerity. Nevertheless, it merely scrapes the surface, giving little insight into the real motivating forces behind Waksman’s scientific genius.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Scientific Contributions of Selman A. Waksman: Selected Articles Published in Honor of His Eightienth Birthday, July 22, 1968. Edited by H. Boyd Woodruff. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1968. A collection of Waksman’s scientific contributions, including an introduction by Woodruff, one of his students, giving a brief biography of the scientist.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Streptomycin: Background, Isolation, Properties, and Utilization.” Science 118 (September 4, 1953): 259-266. Waksman’s Nobel Prize address, describing the scientific work that led to the development of streptomycin.

1941-1970: September, 1943-March, 1944: Waksman Discovers the Antibiotic Streptomycin.