- Person
- Selman Waksman
- Lived
- 1888–1973
- Field
- Microbiology
- From
- Russian-American
The story
The antibiotics discovered in Selman Waksman's laboratory, above all streptomycin and neomycin, earned significant royalties from licensing. The patents were held through Rutgers, and rather than keep most of the money, Waksman chose to put it back into science, so that the discoveries made in one laboratory could pay for the next generation of research.
In 1949 the trustees of Rutgers voted to establish an Institute of Microbiology, with Waksman as its first director. According to his Nobel biography, the larger share of the royalties from streptomycin and neomycin was assigned to building and supporting the institute, which was devoted to research and advanced teaching in microbiology at doctoral and postdoctoral level. The idea of such an institute went back to Waksman's own mentor, Jacob Lipman.
In 1951, using half of his personal patent royalties, Waksman created the Foundation for Microbiology, a private body that supports microbiology research and publications at institutions around the world. At a meeting of the foundation's trustees that July, he urged the building of a facility devoted to microbiology, and the foundation helped fund the construction of the Institute of Microbiology on what is now the Busch Campus of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. The institute opened in June 1954. Waksman led it until he retired in 1958, and after his death in 1973 Rutgers renamed it the Waksman Institute of Microbiology in his honour.
In 1952, the year after the foundation was created, Waksman received the Nobel Prize, and his Nobel medal is displayed in the institute's lobby today. The foundation itself continued to support research for decades, with Waksman's son, the immunologist Byron Waksman, serving as its president from 1970 to 2000. Waksman and his wife, Deborah, also set up a Rutgers scholarship for immigrant students.
Today the institute's faculty study microbial, plant and animal biology, from drug resistance and cancer to sustainable energy and nutrition, and they teach and train undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students.
Why it matters
The Waksman Institute continues to train students and carry out research in genetics, molecular biology and infectious disease seventy years after it opened.
About Selman Waksman
Discovered streptomycin, the first effective antibiotic for tuberculosis. Coined the word "antibiotic." Nobel laureate, 1952.
More about Selman Waksman
- Waksman isolated the first antibiotic shown to fight cancerIn 1940 Selman Waksman and H. Boyd Woodruff isolated actinomycin from soil bacteria. Actinomycin D became the first antibiotic shown to have anti-cancer activity.
- Selman Waksman's soil research found a cure for tuberculosisSelman Waksman's search of soil microbes produced streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, and he gave the word 'antibiotic' its modern meaning.
- Waksman's lab isolated more than 15 antibioticsSelman Waksman's laboratory at Rutgers isolated more than 15 antibiotics, including actinomycin, streptomycin and neomycin, and developed methods that led to many more.
- Waksman and his student discovered neomycin in 1949In 1949 Selman Waksman and his student Hubert Lechevalier discovered neomycin at Rutgers. It is still used today in creams, ointments and eye drops.
- Waksman founded marine bacteriology at Woods HoleIn 1931 Selman Waksman organised the division of Marine Bacteriology at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, studying how bacteria recycle nutrients in the sea.
Sources
- About the Waksman Institute Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers University
- Selman Waksman Wikipedia
- Waksman Institute of Microbiology Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.