Albert Schatz

His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant who farmed, his mother was English, and Albert Schatz was born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1920 before the family moved to New Jersey, where he went to school in Passaic. He took soil science at the Rutgers College of Agriculture because he meant to farm himself, and graduated top of his class with honours in 1942. A classmate remembered a poverty-stricken, brilliant student who worked with a burning intensity. Five months as Selman Waksman's assistant ended when the army conscripted him that December and made him a bacteriologist in Florida hospitals. A back injury got him discharged on June 15, 1943. He went straight back to the Rutgers basement.

Waksman put him alone in the basement and ordered that the cultures never leave it. Within months the 23-year-old Schatz had two strains of Streptomyces griseus, one swabbed from a chicken's throat and one from heavily manured soil, and on October 19, 1943, he saw their extract kill the most virulent human strain of tuberculosis. He called it streptomycin — the first antibiotic that worked on a disease then killing more people than any other infection. The paper ran on January 1, 1944, with Schatz first, Bugie second, Waksman third. Mayo Clinic trials confirmed it in humans.

On May 1, 1946, Schatz signed his patent rights to the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation for a token dollar, understanding that neither he nor Waksman would profit. In 1949 he learned that Waksman held a private agreement for 20 percent of royalties already worth 350,000 dollars. He sued in March 1950 and settled that December for 120,000 dollars, three percent of royalties, and a court finding that he was entitled to credit legally and scientifically as co-discoverer. Waksman's position was that the drug came out of a systematic screening programme he had designed, in which Schatz was one of many students. Schatz's was that he had done the work. The Nobel went to Waksman alone in October 1952 and has never been revised. The lawsuit left Schatz unemployable in first-rank microbiology, and he taught science education instead.

The second career was in teeth. He left Rutgers in 1946 for Brooklyn College and the National Agricultural College in Doylestown, ran microbiology at Philadelphia General Hospital, and with his uncle Joseph Martin built the proteolysis-chelation theory of tooth decay, published in 1962. Chairs followed at the University of Chile, Washington University in St. Louis, and Temple, where he was professor of science education from 1969 to 1980. Rehabilitation came late, from Milton Wainwright's 1990 history and from Rutgers faculty who lobbied for him: in 1994, 50 years after the discovery, the university gave him its highest honour, the Rutgers University Medal. He died of pancreatic cancer at home in Philadelphia on January 17, 2005. The basement is a museum.

Albert Schatz's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Streptomycin discovery
  Isolated in the Rutgers basement on October 19 — the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis 1943
• Streptomycin, a Substance Exhibiting Antibiotic Activity Against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria article
  The discovery paper — Schatz first author, Elizabeth Bugie second, Waksman third 1944
• US Patent 2,449,866 — Streptomycin and Processes of Preparation other
  Granted to Schatz and Waksman on September 21, two years after both signed the rights away for a dollar 1948
• Grisein discovery
  Found with Donald Reynolds and Waksman from the same organism — later folded into the albomycins 1947
• The Proteolysis-Chelation Theory of Dental Caries article
  Written with Joseph Martin — the second career, in teeth 1962
• The True Story of the Development of Streptomycin article
  His own account, published in Actinomycetes half a century after the fact 1993

• June 15, 1943 aged 23 Discharged from the army with a back injury Six months as a bacteriologist in Florida army hospitals ended, and he returned to Waksman as a doctoral student.
• October 19, 1943 aged 23 Sees his Streptomyces griseus extract kill the tuberculosis bacterium He was 23, working alone in the basement on Waksman's orders, with the most virulent human strain available.
• January 1, 1944 aged 23 The discovery paper appears with Schatz as first author Schatz, Bugie and Waksman, in Experimental Biology and Medicine.
• November 20, 1944 aged 24 The first tuberculosis patient is treated with streptomycin A 21-year-old woman with advanced pulmonary disease, in the Mayo Clinic trial run by William Feldman.
• May 1, 1946 aged 26 Signs his patent rights over to Rutgers for one dollar He understood that neither the foundation nor Waksman would take a profit.
• March 1950 aged 30 Sues Waksman and the Rutgers foundation over royalties and credit He had learned the previous year that Waksman privately held 20 percent.
• December 29, 1950 aged 30 A New Jersey court names him co-discoverer of streptomycin The settlement gave him 120,000 dollars and three percent of royalties.
• December 12, 1952 aged 32 Waksman accepts the Nobel Prize alone in Stockholm The award has never been revised.
• 1994 aged ~74 Rutgers gives him the University Medal, 50 years on Its highest honour, awarded on the anniversary of the discovery after faculty lobbied for years.

• Selman Waksman 1888–1973
  Ran the soil-screening programme that produced streptomycin, the first effective treatment for tuberculosis. sued his supervisor
• Vivien Thomas 1910–1985
  Devised the blue-baby heart operation without a medical degree, and went unnamed on the paper. parallel credit dispute
• Sidney Farber 1903–1973
  The first remissions in childhood leukemia, and the Jimmy Fund used the drug against cancer
• Rosalyn Yalow 1921–2011
  Invented radioimmunoassay with Solomon Berson, refused to patent it, and took the 1977 Nobel alone. took the Nobel he did not