Word: selman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Rutgers University needed to save some money during the war winter of 1941-42, a budget official had a bright idea: Why not fire Selman Waksman, an obscure Ukrainian-born microbiologist who was getting $4,620 a year for "playing around with microbes in the soil?" That sort of fun & games, the moneyman pointed out, had never really paid...
Fortunately for Rutgers - and for mankind - Dean William H. Martin of the College of Agriculture saved Dr. Waksman from the ax. Within two years Selman Waksman's "playing around with microbes" had paid off with one of the biggest jackpots that has ever gushed from a scientist's laboratory. Dr. Waksman (rhymes with boxman) had become the discoverer of streptomycin, which ranks next to penicillin among the antibiotics and is the first of these "wonder drugs" to show hopeful results in the treatment of tuberculosis...
...From patent rights on streptomycin donated by discoverer Dr. Selman Wakeman, a new $1,000,000 Institute of Microbiology will be built...
...Selman A. Waksman, 60, discoverer of streptomycin and neomycin (TIME, April 4), has dreamed for years of better facilities for hunting new antibiotics and for teaching others to join in the search. Last week streptomycin and the generosity of Scientist Waksman brought the dream near reality. Rutgers University announced that Dr. Waksman had turned over his patent rights to the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation...
...Selman Waksman is a soil expert, but he cannot find time for gardening; he is an authority on marine microorganisms, but he never goes fishing. He plugs away at his molds, has written some 300 scientific papers and half a dozen books, spends much of his time away from the laboratory poring over scientific books. He occasionally reads a novel, but is bored unless it has "social values." ("Relations of man to man," he says, "are as important as relations of microbe to microbe...