Selman Waksman

Selman Waksman married his childhood sweetheart, Bertha Deborah Mitnik, on August 4, 1916. Following their marriage, the couple stayed at California and New York before finally settling at New Brunswick, New Jersey. Bertha frequently accompanied her husband on his scientific trips.

The couple was blessed with a daughter, Byron Halsted. Byron attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and later pursued an academic career as a research immunologist and teacher. She was involved in the multiple sclerosis research.

Waksman breathed his last on August 16, 1973. He was interred at the Crowell Cemetery in Woods Hole, Barnstable County, Massachusetts.

Selman Waksman was born on July 22, 1888, in Nova Pryluka, Podolia Governorate, Russian Empire, to Jewish parents, Fradia and Jacob Waksman,

Young Waksman attained his early education from private tutors before enrolling in an evening school in Odessa. He became bar mitzvah at the age of thirteen. In 1910, he gained his matriculation degree from Fifth Gymnasium. Same year, the family shifted base to United States, after his mother’s death. In 1916, he became a naturalised American citizen.

In America, Waksman attended Rutgers College. He graduated from the same in 1915 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture. Continuing his studies at Rutgers, he received a Master’s degree in science the following year. While studying, Waksman trained under J.G Lipman at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, researching on soil bacteriology. It was Lipman who helped define Waksman future career as a microbiologist.

In 1915, Waksman made his first public presentation, with R. E. Curtis, ‘Bacteria, Actinomycetes, and Fungi of the Soil’ to the Society of American Bacteriologists at Urbana, Illinois.

Following his studies at Rutgers, Waksman was appointed as a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1918, he gained his doctorate degree in biochemistry from the university along with his fellow researcher T. Brailsford Robertson.

Upon completing his doctorate degree, Waksman returned to his alma mater at Rutgers in 1918, where he was appointed as a lecturer on soil microbiology. Simultaneously, he joined Dr Lipman as a microbiologist at the latter’s Experiment Station.

It was while working as a university scientist at Rutgers that Waksman started on his pursuits with actinomycetes and with organisms involved in sulphur oxidation. His most important contribution during this phase was the isolation of Thiobacillus thiooxidans.

Along with his fellow researchers and colleagues, Waksman devised standardized methods of evaluating microbial populations in soil samples. He studied the decomposition of organic residues in soils and compost to form humus.

In 1924, Waksman made a family trip to Europe where he attended the International Conference of Soil Science in Rome. Next, he toured the microbiological and soil laboratories of the European countries. Returning to his homeland, he penned the book, ‘Soil Microbiology in 1924’ which became a precursor to his famous book, ‘Principles of Soil Microbiology’ which was published in 1927. In between, he published the book, ‘Enzymes’.

Post 1925, his scientific research became large and diverse as more and more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows joined his laboratory. He devoted himself more to the organizational aspects of science. During this phase, he published several works, namely, ‘The Soil and the Microbe’, ‘Humus’ and so on. He also became an adviser on the commercial development of composts.

Waksman discovered a total of twenty antibiotics through extensive research and development, of which actinomycin discovered in 1940, streptomycin in 1944 and neomycin in 1949 were the most prized invention. The discovery of streptomycin created a revolution in the medical world as it effectively put an end to the threat of tuberculosis. The discovery also gained him the most coveted award, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952.