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In 1952 the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Selman Waksman alone.

Nobel medalHe refused to support Schatz's appeal against exclusion and made no mention of Schatz's contribution in his acceptance speech. Schatz sued Waksman over the royalties for streptomycin.

A Little Story:

When I was a student, one of my tutors told me about Selman Waksman:

  • how he started as a poor jewish immigrant & worked his way up to become a Professor at Rutgers
  • about how he chose to study an obscure & unfashionable group of bacteria, the Actinomycetes, for 20 years before discovering streptomycin
  • about the value of undirected scientific research - how the pursuit of knowledge is its own reward
For 20 years, Waksman was one of my scientific heroes, & I repeated the story to my students. Now, I find out about Schatz, and I'm no longer sure what to think about Waksman.

What do you think? If you want to explore this further, you may want to read:

"On Being A Scientist: Responsible Conduct In Research"

What have we learned ?

© MicrobiologyBytes 2007.