Albert Schatz

Who was Albert Schatz?

Albert Israel Schatz was an American microbiologist and science educator, best known as the discoverer of the antibiotic, streptomycin. Schatz graduated from Rutgers University in 1942 with a bachelor's degree in soil microbiology, and received his doctorate from Rutgers in 1945.

In 1943, as a 23-year-old postgraduate research assistant working in the university's soil microbiology laboratory under the direction of Selman Waksman, Schatz volunteered to search for soil-born microorganisms that would kill or inhibit the growth of penicillin-resistant bacteria including tubercle bacillus, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. In three and a half months he had isolated two strains of bacterium that stopped the growth of tubercle bacillus and several other penicillin-resistant bacteria in a petri dish.