Albert Schatz, Microbiologist, Dies at 84
NY Times
Albert Schatz, a microbiologist who in the 1940’s helped develop the powerful antibiotic streptomycin but later had to go to court to be recognized as a co-discoverer of the drug, died on Jan. 17 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 84.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his wife, Vivian, said.
Dr. Schatz, who taught at Temple University until his retirement in 1981, did his work on streptomycin in 1943. He was a 23-year-old graduate student, working in the Rutgers University laboratory of Selman A. Waksman, an eminent microbiologist.
To Dr. Schatz’s sorrow, as he maintained long afterward, Dr. Waksman gradually assumed sole public credit for the discovery. In 1952, Dr. Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work leading to the development of streptomycin.
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