He was looking for microbes in the soil—and found a cure for tuberculosis

"My Life with Microbes"—this extravagant title is surprisingly well-suited for the autobiography of a man who spent thirty years searching the earth for invisible fighters against human diseases. He was the one who coined the term “antibiotics” for these substances. And in 1952, he received the Nobel Prize.

His name was Selman Waksman—an American born in Ukraine.Intent continuesits series of articles about people whose lives are connected to Odesa.

From a Small Town to Odessa

Odessa did not appear in his life right away. Solomon was born in the small town of Nova Pryluky in what was then the Kyiv Governorate. Today, it is a village of a few thousand residents in the Vinnytsia region. The family’s financial situation did not allow them to have everything at once. His father, Yakov, came from a modest family. His mother, Frida London, ran a small shop. Frida was quite educated for a woman of that time; she knew Yiddish and Hebrew and tried to give her son the best education possible. The local cheder provided him with a basic education. The boy then studied hard to prepare for admission to the Zhytomyr Gymnasium, but managed to fail the geography exam. The strict examiner demanded that he name the river on which Berlin stands. But the boy simply couldn’t remember. And no amount of talk about other major European rivers convinced the teacher to change his verdict—“unsatisfactory.”

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Selman Waksman in his youth. PHOTO: alchetron.com

Who knows how the young man’s life would have turned out if he had remembered the River Spree. Later, as a renowned scientist, during a visit to Berlin, Selman Waksman nearly burst into tears while standing on the banks of that very fateful river.

After his first setback, Solomon did not give up on his dream of getting an education, even though this was quite a difficult task for Jews in the Russian Empire. And it wasn’t just a matter of money, but also of government restrictions on access to education. Odessa became the next city where he would pursue his dream.

In the evenings, along with his friends from Nova Pryluky, he studied with teachers from Odessa’s Fifth Boys’ Gymnasium. And these same teachers administered exams to external students. Later, he would recall in particular Kindzhi (a teacher of Russian language and literature) and Tarnarider (a teacher of mathematics, physics, and chemistry). Finally, after passing all his exams, at the age of 21, he received a certificate confirming completion of his gymnasium education.

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Odessa State Agrarian University, formerly the Fifth Boys’ Gymnasium. PHOTO: upload.wikimedia.org

This was his ticket to admission to the university of his dreams.

But then life took a sharp turn—his mother passed away. His father, with whom Solomon had a rather strained relationship, remarried. The young man saw no point in returning home. Moreover, the country was entering a dark period of wars, revolutions, and anti-Jewish pogroms.

From Odessa to New Jersey

And it was at this very time that one of his cousins living abroad invited Solomon to move to America to live with her. In 1910, the young man left home and from that moment on was known by the American name Zelman.

At first, he lived with his sisters on a farm in New Jersey. Among other things, they kept chickens there. And, ironically, it was precisely these chickens that, nearly forty years later, would lead Zelman Waksman to a groundbreaking discovery and a Nobel Prize. Zelman worked on the farm while also diligently studying English.

Eventually, Zelman became a student at nearby Rutgers College. However, instead of the medical school he had dreamed of—which was beyond his means—he chose soil science. And, surprisingly, it was in the soil, many years later, that he would discover a substance that would help humanity fight tuberculosis.

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Rutgers University campus today. PHOTO: www.thoughtco.com

Much later, as he received the Nobel Prize from pediatrician Arvid Waldgren, Selman Waksman heard the following words: “You are not a physiologist, nor are you a doctor, yet your contribution to the advancement of medicine is of immense significance. Streptomycin has already saved the lives of thousands of people. We, as medical professionals, consider you one of humanity’s greatest benefactors.”

Meanwhile, Selman Waksman was studying at Rutgers and had begun researching soil bacteria. He noticed that the bacteria that cause tuberculosis disappear in the soil. Zelman then hypothesized that there were some antagonistic bacteria in the soil. This is how actinomycetes caught his attention. But a revolutionary discovery was still a long way off.

In 1916, Selman Waksman became a U.S. citizen and married Deborah Mitnick, the younger sister of his childhood friend Peacy. The boys had once set off for America together and promised to bring Deborah over as soon as they got settled. They kept their word.

In 1919, Selman and Deborah had their only son, Byron Holsted Waksman. He was named after Byron Holsted, one of Zelman’s teachers, who played an important role in the early stages of his scientific career. Byron Waksman would later become a renowned immunologist, a professor at Yale University, and one of the pioneers of neuroimmunology. Deborah, meanwhile, was musically gifted and sang in a choir in New York. 

The Earth—the Key to Fighting Disease

His scientific research led the scientist to take a trip to Europe. He studied the work of leading laboratories in France, Italy, and Germany. During their six-month trip to Europe in 1924, the Waxman family also visited their hometown. What Selman witnessed in Nova Pryluky left him with painful memories. “The greatest misfortune one can possibly imagine, the most terrible catastrophe ever endured by the peoples of Russia. The most powerful experiment in social and political relations—it’s hard to put into words everything we saw…”

The trip resulted in the treatise “Principles of Soil Microbiology,” published in 1927. Zelman Waksman’s next visit to the USSR took place in the 1950s.

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Cover of Selman Waksman’s book. PHOTO: tse4.mm.bing.net

Scientific research continued. And time was of the essence—World War II had begun. It was necessary to accelerate the development of new drugs to combat infectious diseases and epidemics, which invariably accompany wars.

During subsequent research, Waksman’s colleagues succeeded in isolating streptotricin, which had the desired effect but proved to be too toxic for animals and humans. So, the search had to continue.

Chickens came to the rescue. While studying the microflora of a healthy chicken’s throat in Waksman’s laboratory, researchers discovered a strain of Streptomyces griseus capable of inhibiting the growth of other bacteria. Another promising strain of the same microorganism was isolated from soil. While working with them, Albert Schatz discovered that they produced a new antibiotic—streptomycin. It soon became clear that it was also effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis—the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

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Zelman Waksman’s research team at Rutgers University, 1947. PHOTO: static.gazeta.ua

After several years of research, the world received the long-awaited cure for the “great white plague,” as tuberculosis was called at the time. In addition, streptomycin proved effective against other diseases: typhoid fever, cholera, bubonic plague, tularemia, urinary tract infections, and others.

The pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., which in 1939 assumed the costs of testing, obtained a monopoly on the drug’s production and began mass production, paying royalties to the inventors. Nevertheless, in 1945, Selman Waksman approached the management of Merck & Co, asking them to terminate the 1939 agreement and relinquish the monopoly, thereby allowing other companies to manufacture the drug, which would make it cheaper and more accessible. Interestingly, the company showed magnanimity and agreed to these terms.

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Selman Waksman on the cover of *Time* magazine, 1949. PHOTO: alchetron.com

Selman Waksman received royalties from the sale of streptomycin and allocated half of the proceeds to establish the Microbiology Foundation, which he himself headed. In his youth, Selman Waksman struggled because he did not always have the funds or the resources to conduct and publish the results of his research. Thus, the creation of the Foundation was intended to support future scientists.

A Leading Figure in Microbiology

In 1952, Waksman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for the discovery of streptomycin—the first effective antibiotic against tuberculosis.” In 1958, the scientist retired. But, as the scientist’s son noted in an interview, for a long time afterward, “my father continued to receive many heartfelt letters from grateful patients around the world, including children whose lives had been saved by streptomycin.”

Until the end of his life, Waksman remained a leading figure in microbiology. In retirement, he traveled the world and gave lectures. He also wrote a biography of Vladimir Haffkine (Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine), the discoverer of the cholera and plague vaccines, whose life was also inextricably linked to Odesa.

The scientist died in 1973 at the age of 85. He was buried in Wood Hall, Massachusetts. On his gravestone, a verse from the prophet Isaiah is inscribed in English and Hebrew: “Let the earth open up and bring forth salvation” (Isa. 45:8).

Selman Waksman literally brought these prophetic words to life by beginning to study soil bacteria, which led him to the discovery of streptomycin, which to this day saves humanity from the “great white plague.” While serving as a professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University for four decades, Waksman discovered more than twenty antibiotics and established procedures that led to the creation of many others.

In 2003, to mark the 115th anniversary of the scientist’s birth and the 60th anniversary of the discovery of streptomycin, a memorial stele was erected in Nova Pryluky, and Selman Waksman’s son, Byron Holsted Waksman, attended the unveiling.

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Memorial stele in Nova Pryluky. PHOTO: i0.wp.com

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