Word: penicillins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Brooklyn's Charles Pfizer & Co., Inc., the world's largest producer of penicillin, made news on Wall Street last week. In one day, Pfizer stock jumped six points, to 79. This was phenomenal for a stock selling at 35 five months ago. But not for Pfizer. Fortnight ago demand was so heavy for Pfizer stock at the market's opening that no price could be set. When it finally opened, it was up six points over the previous day's close. Reason: Pfizer issued a quarterly report that net income, $553,352 in the first quarter...
Pfizer began producing other chemicals by fermentation (oxalic acid, gluconic acid, sorbose). Thus, when the Government launched a top-secret program in 1943 to get penicillin mold produced in large quantities, Pfizer was one of the companies chosen for the job. Many chemists doubted that it could be done. But Pfizer President George A. Anderson, now Board Chairman, risked $3 million of Pfizer cash to build a new plant, was the first to mass-produce penicillin...
Pfizer brought the price of penicillin down from $20 per 100,000 units to less than $1. This chemical miracle was primarily the work of John L. Smith, the practical-minded chemist who now runs the Pfizer Co. Smith, a shy man with an intense dislike of publicity, was born in Germany, came to the U.S. at the age of three. He learned some chemistry in school, was further helped by his father, who had taken a correspondence course in it. Later, Smith attended Cooper Union, but left before getting his degree to go to work as a laboratory assistant...
Said Moore: "The penicillin situation is just about where vitamin B research was 20 years...
...virtually solved, chemists were still unable to synthesize it. The discovery of four types hinted that there might be more. Recent research indicated that the very impurities which manufacturers had striven to eliminate might be responsible for some of the drug's efficacy. Why, no one knows. Could penicillin ultimately be broken into its component parts-each a remedy for a specific infection? Again, no one knows...