01-14-2025, 05:02 AM
Among the great exponents of science
are those who grapple hard for glory
and those who find it snatched away,
with names confined to dusty books,
brief mentions, at best;
and few, if any, hear their story:
Albert Schatz, for example,
was entranced by soil;
he mulched his way through masses of muck
and found a microbe he supposed
could halt the charge of tuberculosis.
Within a matter of months,
a saviour appeared: streptomycin.
His supervisor, one Selman Waksman,
assumed control of the clinical trials.
Waksman received a Nobel Prize,
and as for Schatz,
long after Waksman’s death,
he earned a kind of mangled amends:
the American Society for Microbiology
bestowed on him its highest award:
the Selman Waksman medal.