Experiment Eleven (36 page)

Waksman's son, Byron, added
his personal view
. There was a different academic etiquette in those days, he wrote. Before World War Two, “scientists who directed laboratory programs of any significance regularly appeared as senior authors on all papers emanating from their laboratories. Waksman was one of the first to wish to give his pupils and younger colleagues greater prominence by placing their names before his at the top of his papers. That fact should not mislead anyone about where the ideas, methods and organization of the program of discovery came from.” Byron
Waksman said that he “felt sorry for Schatz who was a victim both of the changing fashions in scientific publication and of his own misapprehension of the relative importance of his role in the research.”

IN THIS AMERICAN
saga, there was one great American institution that had been mistaken about streptomycin. For more than a quarter century, the curators of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History had believed the sole discoverer of streptomycin to be Selman Waksman. The museum still maintained the antibiotics exhibition including Waksman's artifacts, donated in 1953, among them the pages copied from Waksman's laboratory notebooks.

After Waksman's death in 1973, Schatz had heard about the exhibition and had written to the Smithsonian, asking
if his own contribution had been included
, or even if his name was mentioned. The Smithsonian had replied with a
list of Waksman's items
. No, Schatz's name was not mentioned in this exhibition.

On March 9, 1996, Vivian Schatz clipped a short article from the
Philadelphia Inquirer
under the headline PART OF THE ORIGINAL MOLD OF PENICILLIN DRAWS $35,106. One of Fleming's glass slides containing the mold that produced penicillin had been sold at Sotheby's in London. A handwritten inscription on the back of the slide read, “The mold that makes penicillin. Alexander Fleming.” The slide had been bought by Pfizer, fetching double what the auctioneers had expected. Pfizer had outbid the Sydney-based Australian Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

Vivian wondered whether the Smithsonian might be interested in the two test tubes from Schatz's original streptomycin experiments that he had sealed, one in 1943 and the other in 1944, in his basement laboratory. They were the first samples of the new drug—preserved by Schatz himself and originally given to his mother. One was a culture of
A. griseus
, and the other was an actual sample of streptomycin, part of a batch that Schatz had prepared for the Mayo Clinic for Feldman and Hinshaw's first TB tests on guinea pigs. Surely, the historic value of these test tubes was equivalent to that of a slide of penicillin once used by Fleming, Vivian thought.

The problem was that the test tubes were in England. Schatz had entrusted them to Milton Wainwright with the idea that Wainwright, with
connections in the world of microbiology that Schatz had long ago lost, might find a place for them in a museum of science, in America, Britain, or elsewhere.

The two test tubes from Albert Schatz's experiments on display at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., in 1996. (Courtesy Milton Wainwright
)

Rutgers had never sought any items from Schatz, even when it had turned his basement laboratory into a museum of the discovery of streptomycin. That collection was also full of Waksman's artifacts.

In 1989, Wainwright had offered the two test tubes to the Smithsonian. There was “
absolutely no doubt
about the authenticity of the samples,” he had written, adding, “As you know Dr. Schatz's role in the discovery has been neglected.” But he had never received a reply.

Wainwright now returned the test tubes, and Schatz himself wrote again. The Smithsonian was finally interested, and Schatz carried the tubes in person to Washington. At the National Museum of American History, they were pleased to have these “real treasures” and “
thoroughly enjoyed
” his visit, which, as it turned out, set in motion the planning of a new exhibition to replace the original one.

Today, the millions of people who visit the museum each year can see an exhibition in the Science in American Life section. There, among Thomas Edison's lamp, an exhibition on atomic power, and early plastic artifacts in a 1950s American kitchen, is a small display case devoted to medical
marvels. The case includes a photo of penicillin going on sale in 1945 and Elvis Presley receiving an injection of Jonas Salk's 1955 polio vaccine. There, also, are Albert Schatz's two test tubes.

Next to the tubes is a picture of Schatz in his long white lab coat, tending to his microbes in his basement laboratory. The caption finally, and officially, tells the simple truth: “Dr. Albert Schatz discovered streptomycin in 1943 when he was a 23-year-old graduate student working with Dr. Selman Waksman at Rutgers University.”

The pages copied from Dr. Waksman's notebook for the original exhibition are now in storage and out of sight, where they belong.

Albert Schatz died on January 17, 2005, at his home in Philadelphia. The cause was pancreatic cancer. He was eighty-four. In obituaries, the
New York Times
and the
Times
of London referred to him as “co-discoverer” of streptomycin but noted that he had to go to court to establish his title.

In the life span of Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz, medicine had gone through a revolution—from a time when there was no cure for bacterial diseases, to the golden age of antibiotics when there was hope that they might also be used against cancer, into another era of uncertainty when the discovery of new antibiotics could not compete with the new resistant strains of bacteria.

These strains still
threaten efforts
to control tuberculosis in India, China, Russia, and the former states of the Soviet Union. Worldwide, two million continue to die from tuberculosis every year. The pharmaceutical industry, disillusioned by the increasing cost of discovery, lost interest as new antibiotics were desperately needed.

Today, microbiologists are uncovering a fascinating microbial world, far beyond the one known to Waksman and Schatz in which multicolored microbes excreted toxins into zones of antagonism in petri dishes, killing off their neighbors in a battle for survival. Once considered to be single-cell organisms acting on their own and in mute isolation, with little or no capacity for collective behavior, bacteria turn out to have a well-developed social life. They
communicate
with one another. In response to environmental changes, when colonies are under stress, they send out signals in the form of tiny chemical molecules—some warning of threats to their food supply, others of a need to take action against sudden changes in temperature and acidity. These signals trigger production of antibiotic weapons.

Scientists are working out how to create
artificial environments
that produce such responses. They are also looking at ways of manipulating microbe genes, and their focus is still on the Streptomyces family that long ago produced streptomycin. Within the genomes of two members of that family, scientists have found clusters of what they call “
sleeping genes
,” which have been present but not active. The trick, so the scientists believe, is to wake up these genes and put them to work, producing new antibiotics. This new generation of researchers is hopeful, devoted, and persistent, as was Albert Schatz in the summer of 1943, that they can find hundreds of new antibiotics.

I am indebted to my longtime friend Robert Goodman, dean of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, for his counsel from start to finish on this book. And I owe special thanks to Milton Wainwright, who launched a reexamination of the streptomycin discovery and who loaned me his unique collection of Waksman-Schatz papers.

If there was a eureka moment in my research for this story, it came courtesy of Professor Douglas Eveleigh, Helen Hoffman, and Tom Frusciano and his team of dedicated archivists in the Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. Over three years, the team fulfilled repeated and undoubtedly nagging requests for access to the sixty manuscript boxes and other material in the Waksman Papers, and also for the papers of the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation. However, one request eluded them: Albert Schatz's lab notebooks, which had gone missing. By chance one day, Erika Gorder, a member of the archivists' team, found them in an unmarked cardboard box. The notebook for the year 1943 documents Experiment 11.

At Rutgers, Professer Eveleigh patiently assisted me through several scientific thickets, and provided me with contacts and copies of documents from his own archive. I am grateful to other past and present faculty members at Rutgers who were generous with their time, insights, and hospitality, especially Hubert and Midge Lechevalier, who enriched the story with their own experiences and provided me with documents from archives unavailable elsewhere. Joan Bennett, Karl Maramorosch, and David Pramer added important insights. Among Selman Waksman's former students, Boyd Woodruff generously recalled his experiences in two long interviews. Don Johnstone recounted his extraordinary discovery as a member of the
official team of scientific observers at the U.S. atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946.

Vivian Schatz graciously received me at her home in Philadelphia on several occasions, guided me through the Schatz papers at Temple University, and provided new and important material from Albert Schatz's personal archive. Carl Sigmond expertly recorded our conversations. Byron Waksman kindly recalled his childhood with his parents, and provided invaluable firsthand perspectives. My thanks also to Dorothy Hinshaw Patent for her recollections and for help in finding photographs.

Thanks to Tom Whitehead and his staff for their help with the Albert Schatz papers at the Special Collections Research Center of Temple University, Philadelphia; to Renee Ziemer and Robert Nellis at the Mayo Clinic Historical Unit; to the staff of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia; to Jay Viszoki at Merck Archives; to the staff at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division; to Amy Schmidt and the staff of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; to Ellen Alers at the Smithsonian archives, and Diane Wendt at the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. In London, thanks to the staff of the United Kingdom Public Record Office.

The following sources gave permission to use and quote from papers, journals, and books: Byron Waksman for permission to quote from his father's works; Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, for permission to use material and photographs from the Selman A. Waksman Papers and the papers of the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation; Vivian Schatz to quote from papers and to use illustrations from Albert Schatz's personal archives; the Special Collections Research Center of the Temple University Libraries for permission to use material from their archives; Mara Ralston for permission to quote from Doris Jones Ralston's letters to Albert Schatz; Dorothy Hinshaw Patent for permission to quote from H. Corwin Hinshaw's letters.

Several others advised on the science, explained military code names, found obscure references, read early drafts, and helped with translations. In this category, my thanks to Natalia Alexandrova, Diana Frank, John Pringle, Julian Perry Robinson, Annika Savill, Viktor Sokolov, and Duncan Taylor.

My agent, Michael Carlisle, wise and enthusiastic as ever, steered the book into the experienced hands of my publisher, George Gibson, at Walker
& Co. in New York and Bloomsbury in London. I was so fortunate to have the expert advice, care, and attention of Jackie Johnson, my U.S. editor, and Patti Ratchford produced a wonderful cover. Thanks also to the Walker team—Christina Gilbert, Laura Keefe, Peter Miller, Laura Phillips—and to copyeditor Lynn Rapoport. In London, thanks to my editor, Michael Fishwick, and to Anna Simpson.

Nothing in my life is possible without Eleanor Randolph, who was, as always, my adviser and first reader, adding her peerless touches to the manuscript. Victoria again provided invaluable computer expertise. Any mistakes are mine.

Several archives in the United States and Britain contain documents used to tell this story. The two most important are the Selman A. Waksman Papers (SAW), Special Collections and University Archives (R-MC 003), Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and the Albert Schatz Papers (AS), Special Collections, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia. The Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives also hold Schatz's notebooks and the archive of the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation (RREF). The U.S. Library of Congress holds another set of Selman Waksman papers (LOC), Collections of the Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. Vivian Schatz holds her husband's personal archive (AS personal archive). Other archives include the H. Corwin Hinshaw Papers at the American Philosophical Society (APS), Philadelphia; the Modern Military records at the National Archives (NA), Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland; the National Academy of Sciences archives (NAS); the Smithsonian Archives (SA); Washington, D.C.; the streptomycin records at Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, London; and the deliberations of the Royal Caroline Institute, Stockholm. Milton Wainwright collected his own archive (MW). A number of former Rutgers staff have papers. They include H. Boyd Woodruff (HBW), Hubert Lechevalier (HL), and Donald B. Johnstone (DBJ). Of the present Rutgers faculty, Professor Douglas Eveleigh maintains his own papers relating to the discovery of streptomycin.