Albert Schatz (microbiologist)

Albert Israel Schatz (born February 2, 1920 in Norwich, Connecticut , † January 17, 2005 in Philadelphia ) was an American microbiologist and science educator . He was a co-discoverer of the antibiotic streptomycin , but had to take legal action in order to recognize his contribution to this achievement and, unlike his then laboratory manager Selman Abraham Waksman , did not receive the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine .

Life

Albert Schatz was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1920 and grew up in Passaic , New Jersey . He earned a bachelor's degree in soil microbiology from Rutgers University in 1942 . He then began there, interrupted by a brief assignment from November 1942 to June 1943 as a bacteriologist in a hospital of the United States Air Force , to work in the laboratory for soil microbiology under Selman Abraham Waksman as a doctoral student. The focus of research in Waksman's laboratory was the isolation of new antibiotic substances.

In 1943, after around three and a half months of work, Schatz succeeded in isolating a new antibiotic from the bacterium Streptomyces griseus , which was later named "Streptomycin" and which became one of the most important drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis . Two years later he received his doctorate . In 1950, he sued Selman Waksman and the Rutgers University Research Foundation for recognition as a co-discoverer of streptomycin and for a share in the proceeds from the discovery. The lawsuit was settled out of court on both counts in his favor. When Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952 for the discovery of streptomycin, however, Schatz was not considered.

In the following years he worked from 1949 to 1952 as an assistant professor at Brooklyn College , then from 1952 to 1958 as a professor at the National Agricultural College in Doylestown , from 1960 to 1962 as head of the bacteriological department of the Philadelphia General Hospital and from 1962 to 1965 at the Universidad de Chile . From 1965 to 1969 he was professor of science education at Washington University , before he worked in the same function at Temple University from 1969 until his retirement in 1981 . He has published more than 700 specialist articles and several books and received honorary doctorates from several universities at home and abroad and honorary memberships of scientific societies in various countries in 1994, the Rutgers University Medal , the highest award of Rutgers University, in recognition of his work on the discovery of streptomycin .

Schatz was married from 1945. He died in Philadelphia in 2005 of complications from pancreatic cancer .

Works (selection)

• The Story of Microbes. New York 1952
• Teaching Science with Garbage. Emmaus 1972
• Teaching Science with Soil. Emmaus 1972

literature

• Inge Auerbacher: Finding Dr. Schatz: The Discovery of Streptomycin and a Life It Saved. iUniverse, New York 2006, ISBN 0-595-37997-4

Web links

• Albert Schatz, Ph.D. (English, with picture)
• Obituary in the New York Times , February 2, 2005 (English)