Dr. Selman A. Waksman, the discoverer of Streptomycin, is an admirer of Waldemar Haffkine. I wonder how many readers know who Haffkine was? I’m sure many know he was an outstanding scientist and a great Jew.
As a great biologist, he spent many years in India fighting first, cholera and after, outbreaks of the plague.
Late in life he became an orthodox Jew. In 1916 he published a lengthy article championing orthodox Judaism. When he died in 1930 he bequeathed his entire fortune towards the support of Talmud Torahs and Yeshivas in Eastern Europe.
During his life he was adored by the people of India whom he had helped so much. After his death he was revered throughout the now destroyed Torah world of Eastern European Jewry.
In 1931 a conference of Polish and Lithuanian rabbis was held in Vilna. At its opening, “Kaddish” was recited for Haffkine.
Some time ago we heard that Professor Selman Waksman was writing a book about Haffkine. The news thrilled us. The famous discoverer of streptomycin is writing about “our” Haffikne! Waksman is not only a renowned scientist, but also a great writer. His autobiography “My Life with Mircrobes” became a best seller. We were burning to know more about his book on Haffkine.
We visited the scientist in his offices at the Insititute of Microbiology, Rutgers University. It was a cold day. When we arrived in New Brunswick, we were frozen to the bone, but Dr. Waksman’s hearty welcome and warm handshake made us feel better.
“Haffkine’ the seventy-six year old professor said. When he pronounced his name, his eyes lit up and his voice seemed to grow younger.
“A book about Haffkine, describing his personality and achievements has long been overdue,” the professor continued. “As none was forthcoming, I sat down to write one. Didn’t our sages say: Bemakom she’ein Anashim-– where there is no man, be you a man”.
Waksman has been attracted to the personality of Haffkine because of many similarities in their lives. Haffkine was a Jew and a bacteriologist. So is Waksman. The discoverer of vaccines for the cholera and the plague studied in Odessa. So did the discoverer of streptomycin and neomycin. Haffkine left Russia because he realized that as a Jew he would never be appointed to a professorship. He was in fact offered a university position on condition that he change his religion, but he refused to do so. Waksman left Russia because as a Jew his chances to be admitted as a student to a university were very small.
Waksman searched for material on Haffkine in many parts of the world. During his visits to India he talked with General Sokhy, who for many years had been director of the Hafkfine Institute in Bombay and who know Haffkine well. He received material from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where Haffkine had worked. He also received documents from the U.S.S.R. through the kind intervention of the head of the Microbiological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
While Waksman was in the midst of writing his book, a volume on Haffkine appeared in Russia. Needless to say that the Soviets claimed Haffkine as one of their own, suppressing the fact that the great bacteriologist became an Orthodox Jew and an ardent Zionist.
Waksman is now putting the finishing touches on “the Brilliant and Tragic Life of Waldemar Haffkine Bacteriologist.” Haffkin’s life was brilliant because of his great achievement. It was tragic because of his frustrating struggle with bureaucratic officials in India who impeded his work. After the completion of his book on Haffkine, Waksman will commence writing the life story of another famous scientist: Jacob G. Lipman, eminent soil chemist and bacteriologist, who was Waksman’s teacher.
Lipman too, was an immigrant from Russian. In his biography, Waksman will devote a large chapter to a description of the life of Russian Jewish immigrants in the U.S. in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Waksman was born in Priluka near Kiev. He received a wide and intensive Jewish education. When he grew older, his mother engaged private tutors to teach him general subjects. Later he completed his schooling in Odessa.
In 1910, soon after he had obtained his matriculation diploma, he embarked for the U.S. For some time he stayed with relations, earning the language and customs of this country. In the fall of 1911 he entered Rutgers. He was to remain there ever since, with the exception of two years to study and research at the University of California, which awarded him a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1918.
Joining the faculty of Rutgers after his return from California, Waksman served as lecturer in soil microbiology until 1925 when he was made an associate professor. In 1930, he was made full professor and ten years later head of the then newly-established Department of Microbiology.
In the fall of 1914, while a senior at Rutgers, Waksman had selected as research project for his graduation thesis, the study of the distribution of various groups of bacteria, fungi and protozoa in different soils, at different depths and in different seasons of the year.
During his researches his attention was draw to the actinomycetes which make up a large proportion of soil inhabiting bacteria. From then on actinomycetes were to occupy his major interest throughout the years. It was from cultures of some of these organisms that Waksman and his assistants were able in the 1940s to isolate a series of antibiotics including streptomycin and neomycin.
The discovery of these antibiotics have brought Waksman innumerable honors and awards, inlcuidng the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for 1952.
In 1949 Rutgers established with the funds derived from the royalties of streptomycin and neomycin an institute for microbiology. Waksman was named its director. He served in this capacity until his retirement in 1958. Since then he has divided his time between writing and lecturing in many countries.
Waksman told us of his most recent lecture tour. Last fall he was invited to deliver a series of lectures in South America. He lectured at the universities of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Montevideo. Everywhere he was enthusiastically welcomed and feted by the Jewish communities. There is much anti-Semitism in Latin America and the Jewish population takes advantage of the arrival of outstanding Jewish scientists to bolster their prestige and to point out Jewish achievements. The local Jewish communities, “Made the most” of Professor Waksman’s presence among them.
Waksman was scheduled to speak also at the university and at medical societies in Buenos Aires and elsewhere in Argentina. While waiting at the airport of Montevideo he was suddenly taken ill with a generalized peritonitis following an attack of a ruptured appendix. He was saved by antibiotics.
“I received the most excellent care and treatment in the hospital,” Waksman stressed while tlaking of his experiences there. On his way back to New York, the plane stopped at Buenos Aires. Many Argentine personalities, including the leaders of the Jewish community, came to see Prof. and Mrs. Waksman at the airport.
“Though you were not able to lecture in tour country, the mere fact that you had intended to come, has been a great hono r for us,” they told Waksman.
The Microbiologist has now been back in the U.S. for several months. However, he will not be stationary for long.
In March he is going off to Israel. He loves Israel and has visited the country several times. In 1952 he went there at the request of the Israeli government to advise them on the construction of an antibiotic center. This time he will be an honored guest at the groundbreaking ceremonies for the building of a Microbiological institute in Haifa, a project which he is prominently associated.
The Jewish Press, January 24, 1964