Waksman, Selman Abraham (1888-1973)

Waksman, Selman Abraham (1888-1973)

Russian-born American microbiologist

Selman Waksman discovered life-saving antibacterial compounds and his investigations spawned further studies for other disease-curing drugs. Waksman isolated streptomycin, the first chemical agent effective against tuberculosis . Prior to Waksman's discovery, tuberculosis was often a lifelong debilitating disease, and was fatal in some forms. Streptomycin effected a powerful and wide-ranging cure, and for this discovery, Waksman received the 1952 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. In pioneering the field of antibiotic research, Waksman had an inestimable impact on human health.

The only son of a Jewish furniture textile weaver, Selman Abraham Waksman was born in the tiny Russian village of Novaya Priluka on July 22, 1888. Life was hard in late-nineteenth-century Russia. Waksman's only sister died from diphtheria when he was nine. There were particular tribulations for members of a persecuted ethnic minority. As a teen during the Russian revolution, Waksman helped organize an armed Jewish youth defense group to counteract oppression. He also set up a school for underprivileged children and formed a group to care for the sick. These activities prefaced his later role as a standard-bearer for social responsibility.

Several factors led to Waksman's immigration to the United States. He had received his diploma from the Gymnasium in Odessa and was poised to attend university, but he doubtless recognized the very limited options he held as a Jew in Russia. At the same time, in 1910, his mother died, and cousins who had immigrated to New Jersey urged him to follow their lead. Waksman did so, and his move to a farm there, where he learned the basics of scientific farming from his cousin, likely had a pivotal influence on Waksman's later choice of field of study.

In 1911 Waksman enrolled in nearby Rutgers College (later University) of Agriculture, following the advice of fellow Russian immigrant Jacob Lipman, who led the college's bacteriology department. He worked with Lipman, developing a fascination with the bacteria of soil, and graduated with a B.S. in 1915. The next year he earned his M.S. degree. Around this time, he also became a naturalized United States citizen and changed the spelling of his first name from Zolman to Selman. Waksman married Bertha Deborah Mitnik, a childhood sweetheart and the sister of one of his childhood friends, in 1916. Deborah Mitnik had come to the United States in 1913, and in 1919 she bore their only child, Byron Halsted Waksman, who eventually went on to a distinguished career at Yale University as a pathology professor.

Waksman's intellect and industry enabled him to earn his Ph.D. in less than two years at the University of California, Berkeley. His 1918 dissertation focused on proteolytic enzymes (special proteins that break down proteins) in fungi . Throughout his schooling, Waksman supported himself through various scholarships and jobs. Among the latter were ranch work, caretaker, night watchman, and tutor of English and science.

Waksman's former advisor invited him to join Rutgers as a lecturer in soil bacteriology in 1918. He was to stay at Rutgers for his entire professional career. When Waksman took up the post, however, he found his pay too low to support his family. Thus, in his early years at Rutgers he also worked at the nearby Takamine Laboratory, where he produced enzymes and ran toxicity tests.

In the 1920s Waksman's work gained recognition in scientific circles. Others sought out his keen mind, and his prolific output earned him a well-deserved reputation. He wrote two major books during this decade. Enzymes: Properties, Distribution, Methods, and Applications, coauthored with Wilburt C. Davison, was published in 1926, and in 1927 his thousand-page Principles of Soil Microbiology appeared. This latter volume became a classic among soil bacteriologists. His laboratory produced more than just books. One of Waksman's students during this period was René Dubos , who would later discover the antibiotic gramicidin, the first chemotherapeutic 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 1931. For the next decade he spent summers there and eventually 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 gramicidin, derived from a soil bacterium (Bacillus brevis ). The latter 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 penicillin against 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 streptomycin 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 streptomycin was soon realized. Clinical trials showed it to be effective 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 infectious diseases. It could only be treated with a regime of rest and nutritious diet. The tuberculosis bacillus consigned its victims 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 inflammation of 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, but its discovery changed the course of modern medicine. Not only did it directly save countless lives, but its development stimulated scientists around the globe to search the microbial world for other antibiotics and medicines.

In 1949, Waksman isolated neomycin, which proved effective against bacteria that had become resistant to streptomycin. Neomycin also found a broad niche as a topical antibiotic. Other antibiotics soon came forth from his Institute of Microbiology. These included streptocin, framicidin, erlichin, candidin, and others. Waksman himself discovered eighteen antibiotics during the course of his career.

Waksman served as director of the Institute for Microbiology until his retirement in 1958. Even after that time, he continued to supervise research there. He also lectured widely and continued to write at the frenetic pace established early in his career. He eventually published more than twenty-five books, among them the autobiography My Life with the Microbes, and hundreds of articles. He was author of popular pamphlets on the use of thermophilic (heat-loving) microorganisms in composting and on the enzymes involved in jelly-making. He wrote biographies of several noted microbiologists, including his own mentor, Jacob Lipman. These works are in addition to his numerous publications in the research literature.

On August 16, 1973, Waksman died suddenly in Hyannis, Massachusetts, of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was buried near the institute to which he had contributed so much over the years. Waksman's honors over his professional career were many and varied. In addition to the 1952 Nobel Prize, Waksman received the French Legion of Honor, a Lasker award for basic medical science, elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and received numerous commendations from academies and scholarly societies around the world.

See also Antibiotic resistance, tests for; Bacteria and bacterial infection; Streptococci and streptococcal infections