Selman Waksman and the Discovery of Streptomycin

Selman Waksman enrolled at Rutgers College (now Rutgers University) to study agriculture, though he was torn between that and studying medicine. Later in life, he set his team of graduate students and assistants on a search for an antibiotic to treat tuberculosis. Waksman and his team worked day and night testing microbes for antibiotic potential. Hundreds of tests failed. In 1943, however, success was theirs. Albert Schatz, a student of Waksman s, isolated streptomycin. Amid controversy, in 1952, Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his part in discovering the first effective treatment of tuberculosis.