The Waksman Institute of Microbiology is a free-standing
research facility on the Busch campus of Rutgers University. Only
an hour by car from New York City in a rather rural setting of
New Jersey, it has been named after Selman Waksman, who was a faculty
member of the University for many years, and who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1952 for
the discovery of streptomycin - the first antibiotic effective
against tuberculosis. As a student, Dr. Waksman sought guidance from Dr.
Jacob G. Lipman, a professor at Rutgers College of Agriculture
and Director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.
Selman Waksman graduated in 1915. He gained and maintained an
interest in the actinomycetes,
a group of organisms in which he soon became the world's foremost
expert. After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of California
at Berkeley, he returned to Rutgers to develop microbiology under
Dr. Lipman. Over the years, a total of 18 antibiotics were isolated
in Dr. Waksman's laboratory. Two of these, streptomycin and neomycin,
and to a lesser degree actinomycin, have found extensive practical
application. As it became obvious that the royalties from streptomycin,
soon to be fortified by the sales of neomycin, would represent
millions of dollars, Dr. Waksman started to think about strengthening
general microbiology at Rutgers. At a meeting of the board of
Trustees of the Foundation, held in July 1951, it was resolved
that the Foundation should make available to the University $2,300,000
for the proposed Institute of Microbiology.
