Selman Waksman revolutionized medicine, thanks to his discoveries of life-saving antibacterial compounds. His investigations have also spawned further studies for other disease-curing drugs. Waksman isolated streptomycin, the first chemical agent that was effective against tuberculosis. Prior to his discovery, tuberculosis was a lifelong debiliting disease, and was fatal in some forms. Streptomycin effected a cure, and for this discovery, Waksman received the 1952 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. In pioneering the field of antibiotic research, Waksman had an inestimable impact on human health and well-being, creating both a new field of medicine and a new industry.

The only son of a Jewish furniture textile weaver, Selman Abraham Waksman was born in the tiny Russian village of Novaya Priluka on July 22, 1888. Life was hard in late-nineteenth-century Russia. Waksman's only sister died from diphtheria when he was nine. There were particular tribulations for members of a persecuted ethnic minority. As...