Autobiography Selman Abraham Waksman

Nama: Kirtheger Raj
Kelas : 6 Cemerlang
Sekolah: SK Wellesley.

Autobiography Selman Abraham
Waksman

Selman Abraham Waksman (July 22,
1888 - August 16, 1973) was a Russian -
American Jewish -American inventor,
biochemist and microbiologist whose
research on the decomposition of
organisms living in soil made possible the

discovery of streptomycin and several
other antibiotics. A professor of
biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers
University for four decades, he discovered
a number of antibiotics and introduced
the modern meaning of the word to
name them, and he introduced
procedures that have led to the
development of many others.

Proceeds from its patent licensing fund
the microbiological research foundation,
which established the Waksman Institute
of Microbiology located on the Rutgers
University Mound Campus in Piscataway,
New Jersey (USA). In 1952, he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine for "the intelligent, systematic
and successful study of the soil microbes
that led to the discovery of streptomycin."
Selman Waksman and his foundation
were later sued by Albert Schatz, one of
the first PhD students and inventors of
streptomycin, for minimizing Schatz’s role
in the discovery of streptomycin.

In 2005, Selman Waksman was awarded
the ACS National Historical Chemical
Landmark in recognition of his

laboratory’s important work in isolating
more than 15 antibiotics, including
streptomycin, which was the first effective
treatment for tuberculosis (TB).

Selman Waksman was born on July 22,
1888, of Jewish parents, in Nova Pryluka,
Governor of Kiev, Russian Empire, now
Vinnytsia Province, Ukraine. He was the
son of Fradia (London) and Jacob

Waksman. He immigrated to the United
States in 1910, shortly after graduating
from the Fifth Gymnasium in Odessa, and
became a natural American citizen six
years later.
Waksman is named for Solomon, the
King of Kings, which in Russia has been
corrupted for centuries for Zolmin. His
father, Jacob, was a pious man and
earned a modest income by renting small
houses he owned in neighboring villages.
Managing property is not a full -time job;
therefore, he filled his days with prayer
and study at the local synagogue. In his
autobiography, Waksman describes his
father’s influence on him as a “story
teller” full of stories of sages living in
ancient times and the long history of the
Jews. Father and son are not close: “He
was always in the shadows and didn’t play

a big role in my childhood life that fathers
used to do in their children’s lives.

Selman's mother was Fradia London, a
textile merchant. His father was
Jacob Waksman, a former soldier who
inherited property from his father and
became a landlord. The family lived in
the wealthier part of town. Selman was
their only child – his younger sister died
in infancy. Professor Waksman’s wife is
Deborah B. Mitnik. They have one son,
Byron H. Waksman, M.D., who was a
Research Associate at Massachusetts
General Hospital, Boston, and Assistant
Professor at Harvard University Medical
School, and more recently Professor of
Microbiology at Yale University Medical
School, and two grandchildren, Nan and
Peter.

At the age of five, Waksman entered a
local cheder, or religious school. The
education emphasized Jewish studies,
with melodies teaching the basics of
scripture reading and the intricacies of
prayer. Within two years, Waksman was
under the guidance of a more advanced
teacher who emphasized the prophets
and later the Talmud, whose complex
interpretations provided much of the
intellectual diet. But his mother was
concerned about the limitations of the
parish’s education, so he hired a private
tutor who instructed the ten -year -old
boy in Hebrew and Russian as well as
literature, history, arithmetic, and
geography. Despite some shortcomings in
his education, Waksman claims that at
the age of thirteen, he possessed a deep

knowledge of the writings of the Bible
and the Talmud as well as the Russian
language and literature. In addition to her
own lessons, Waksman from the age of
ten years of teaching local students, first
in basic reading and writing and then help
prepare the children of the rich to enter
the schools.

Waksman sailed to Philadelphia in 1910 and
quickly set off for Metuchen, New Jersey,
where he moved in with a cousin who had a
small truck farm that also had a poultry
factory. He spent his first few months in
America on the farm, getting used to animal
nutrition problems, stable compost manure,
and germinating seeds. This seemed to have
strengthened his interest in the chemical
reactions of living bodies, but he did not
know how to organize such a study. At the
suggestion of his cousin, he visited nearby

Rutgers College. There he met Dr. Jacob
Lipman, an immigrant from Russia, who
advised him to abandon his interest in
medical school previously. Instead, Lipman
assured him that the agricultural curriculum
would provide better training.

He immediately enrolled at Rutgers, where
he took an accelerated course job and
spent his fourth year on research
assignments evaluating bacteria in culture
samples from soil layers. While
undertaking this project, Waksman found
himself attracted to a particular type of
filamentous bacterium, actinomycetes.
These microorganisms became the focus
of his master’s thesis at Rutgers and his
doctorate, which he received from the
University of California at Berkeley. Of
course they became his life’s work, though

more than two decades before he
investigated the possibility of using these
microbes to fight other microbes.

Selman Waksman attended Rutgers
College, where he graduated in 1915 with
a Bachelor of Science in agriculture. He
continued his studies at Rutgers, receiving
a Master of Science the following year.
During his graduate studies, he worked
under J. G. Lipman at the New Jersey
Agricultural Experimental Station in
Rutgers doing research in soil bacteriology.
Waksman spent several months in 1915-
1916 at. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture in Washington, DC under Dr.
Charles Thom, studied soil fungi. He was
later appointed a researcher at the
University of California, Berkeley, where
he was awarded his doctorate in

biochemistry in 1918.

Then he joined the faculty at Rutgers
University in the Department of
Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers.
Selman Waksman's team discovered
several antibiotics, including actinomycin,
clavacin, streptothricin, streptomycin,
grisein, neomycin, fradicin, candicidin,
candidin. Two of them, streptomycin and
neomycin, have been widely used in the
treatment of infectious diseases.
Streptomycin is the first antibiotic that
can be used to cure tuberculosis. Selman
Waksman is credited with coining the
term antibiotic, to describe antibacterial
derived from other living organisms, such
as penicillin, although the term was used
by French dermatologist François Henri

Hallopeau, in 1871 to describe
substances opposed to life development.

As a Jew in the days of the declining
Russian Empire, Waksman’s access to
higher education was limited. He was
forced to become what was known as an
extern, a student who studied with a
private tutor and then attended a
government -run school to take formal
examinations. Upon passing this
examination a student gets a diploma
which gives all the rights and privileges of
a normal student. Selman Waksman was
successfully performed in the major cities
of Zhitomir and Odessa. But after the
death of his mother, Waksman decided to
drop an application to a university in
Russia and instead follow the example of
a number of his relatives and immigrated

to the United States. This decision was
made easier by the declining status of the
Jews following the abrogating 1905
revolution. The Tsarist government
responded to these riots by using ancient
tactics to divert attention from the evils of
Russian society by increasing anti-Semitic
sentiment among peasants. The result
was a series of pogroms aimed at Jewish
life and property.

In addition to his work at Rutgers,
Waksman organized the Marine
Bacteriology division at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in 1931. He
was appointed a marine bacteriologist
there and served until 1942. He was
elected trustee at WHOI and eventually
Trustee Live.

His work in the field of microbiology has
been recognized by many scientific and
other communities in the United States,
Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada,
Sweden, Japan, Israel, Italy, Spain, and
Turkey and in 1952 he was voted one of
the 100 greatest men in the world today.
Selman Waksman earned many awards
and accolades, including the Nobel Prize
in 1952; The Star of the Rising Sun
allotted on him by the emperor of Japan,
and the rank of Commander in the
French Légion d'honneur.

Selman Waksman died Aug. 16, 1973, at
Hyannis Hospital, Mass. And is buried in
Woods Hole Village Cemetery in Woods
Hole, Massachusetts. His tombstone is
inscribed "Selman Abraham Waksman:
Scientist", with his date of birth and death,

and the term "The earth shall open and
obtain salvation" in Hebrew and English,
from Isaiah 45: 8.

Other honour’s from Selman Waksman
include antifouling paints for the Navy,
the use of enzymes in laundry detergents,
and the practice of Concord grape root
stems to protect French vineyards from
fungal infections.