Albert Schatz: The discovery of Streptomycin Albert Schatz was an extremely bright young student. But he had the misfortune to be born Jewish (his parents were first generation Russian immigrants, and very poor) at a time when there were quotas on Jews in American education. So, despite his high intelligence he ended up at Rutgers University (a fine institution, but probably not where he would have gone if he was a gentile), where he became involved in microbiology. Schatz had a hunch that he could find microbiotics with healing properties in soil, and he followed his hunch and isolated streptomycin. Streptomycin was an effective antibiotic against TB, which up until that point had been resistant to all other antibiotics. At this time TB was one of the biggest killers in the USA - it was known as “the white death”. Schatz’s discovery was a huge breakthrough. The head of his department, one Selman Waksman, persuaded Schatz to sign over all the intellectual property rights in the discovery to Rutgers on humanitarian grounds, and Schatz did so. But eventually Schatz was to discover two things: (i) Waksman had a deal with Rutgers, whereby he got a 20% kickback on the self-same royalties, and (ii) Waksman was essentially presenting himself as the sole discoverer of streptomycin. So Schatz sued. And he won. But back in those days breaking ranks and suing your university and your department head was simply not done. Especially not if you were a Jew. And so Schatz was ostracised. When he tried to publish his own account of the discovery of streptomycin, the only journal which accepted it was the Pakistan Dental Review. He left Rutgers first for an agricultural college in Pennsylvania, and then later he took up a teaching position in Santiago, Chile. And then, as a final “f**k you” from the academic community, Waksman was awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery. He did not even mention Schatz in his acceptance speech. In 1993, 20 years after Waksman had died, the American Society of Microbiology decided it should honour Schatz for his previously unheralded contribution to science and saving hundreds of thousands of lives. So, with no sense of irony at all, they a https://www.instagram.com/p/CHUojUrB24F/?igshid=38ohwuez58yu
