Selman Waksman

Selman Waksman

Selman Abraham Waksman (July 22, 1888 – August 16, 1973) was a Jewish Ukrainian inventor, Nobel Prize laureate, biochemist and microbiologist whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. A professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University for four decades, he discovered several antibiotics (and introduced the modern sense of that word to name them), and he introduced procedures that have led to the development of many others. The proceeds earned from the licensing of his patents funded a foundation for microbiological research, which established the Waksman Institute of Microbiology located at the Rutgers University Busch Campus in Piscataway, New Jersey (USA). In 1952, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "ingenious, systematic, and successful studies of the soil microbes that led to the discovery of streptomycin." Waksman and his foundation later were sued by Albert Schatz, one of his Ph.D. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Selman Waksman has received more than 342,524 page views. His biography is available in 62 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 55 in 2019). Selman Waksman is the 72nd most popular physician (up from 76th in 2019), the 60th most popular biography from Ukraine (up from 64th in 2019) and the most popular Ukrainian Physician.

Selman Waksman was a microbiologist that discovered streptomycin, which is a drug that can be used to treat tuberculosis.