Selman Waksman

Selman Abraham Waksman (July 22, 1888 – August 16, 1973) was a Russian-born American inventor, biochemist and microbiologist, whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. For his work he won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Waksman emigrated to the United States in 1910 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1916. A professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University for fou