H. Boyd Woodruff

H. Boyd Woodruff Harold Boyd Woodruff (July 22, 1917 – January 19, 2017) was an American Soil chemistry soil chemist, biochemist, microbiologist, researcher at Merck & Co., and outstanding pioneer of antibiotic discovery and development, industrial microbiology, and biochemical engineering. He co-authored numerous papers with Selman Waksman, who was his Ph.D. advisor. Woodruff was elected in 1998 a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and in 2006 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Quotes In presenting the case for a career in industrial microbiology, one is immediately placed on the defensive. Wherever we turn, we hear the disadvantages of industrial microbiology, the grimy and weed-strewn grounds which appear like a state prison, the routine manipulations required, the conversion of a promising scientist into a plodding drudge. One of our speakers today has stated privately that he would not encourage a brilliant and ambitious student to attach himself to most commercial organizations. When it comes to the advantages of employment in industrial microbiology, financial gain is presented grudgingly, but even this is counterbalanced by the argument that academic life provides certain built-in luxuries which no amount of money will purchase. Rich, Saul Chapter. Training for a Career in Industrial Microbiology: Industrial Viewpoint by H. Boyd Woodruff Developments in Industrial Microbiology: Volume 1 Proceedings of the Sixteenth General Meeting of the Society for Industrial Microbiology Held at State College, Pennsylvania, August 30–September 3, 1959 8–12 Springer 2013 8–12 https://books.google.com/books?id=EksGCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA8 abstract Microorganisms are capable of producing natural products with widely divergent chemical structures. Greatest attention in the past has been paid to natural products that have antibiotic properties. Natural products accumulate in industrial fermentation#Fermentation medium fermentation broths during secondary metabolism, a characteristic of the incomplete metabolic control operative in growth-inhibited microorganisms. With this general mechanism of biosynthesis, the natural products synthesized by microorganisms would be expected to have a broad range of pharmacological activities. The directed screening for nonantibiotic natural products has been of limited scope. The expectation that new compounds of interest would be found has been validated. The pharmacologically active natural products provide previously unrecognized structures as tools for fundamental research programs, as well as offering the possibility of direct use in medicine or in industrial processes. Natural products from microorganisms Science 13 June1980 208 4449 1225-1229 10.1126/science.7375932 Actinomycetes are important members of the Soil microbiology soil population, actively growing, metabolizing, degrading resistant substances, capable of producing secondary metabolites useful for man. 1989 Fifty year’s experience with actinomycete ecology Actinomycetologica 3 2 79–88 https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/saj/3/2/3_3_79/_article/-char/ja/ Quotes about H. Boyd Woodruff At the time of his death, he was one of the last living links to the Golden Age of Antibiotics discovery and a towering figure in industrial microbiology. It says something of his stature that he received rare obituaries in both the New York Times [Roberts, 2017] and Science (journal) Science [Bennett et al., 2017]. Joan W. Bennett, King-Thom Chung, & Douglas Eveleigh, H. Boyd Woodruff: Champion of Industrial Microbiology SIMB News (News Magazine of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology) 70 1 2020 10–21 https://www.simbhq.org/docs/simbnews/JanMar2020_SIMBNEWS.pdf Dr. Woodruff was instrumental in isolating two microbes that, while effective against tuberculosis and other infections, proved toxic to humans. But his findings in the early 1940s inspired the rapid development of streptomycin, the miracle cure used to treat tuberculosis, Typhoid fever typhoid, plague and other diseases that did not respond to penicillin and other drugs....Dr. Woodruff was able to isolate two microbes, culture them and purify the antibiotics they produced: first actinomycin, which he found could inhibit tuberculosis, and later streptothricin....At Merck & Co. Merck, he was on the team that during World War II perfected the first commercial mass production of penicillin. He was later the executive director for biological sciences and executive administrator for Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Japan for 10 years. He was also the founding editor of the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal Applied Microbiology. Sam Roberts (journalist) Sam Roberts, H. Boyd Woodruff, Microbiologist Who Paved Way for Antibiotics, Dies at 99 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/science/h-boyd-woodruff-dead-antibiotics-researcher.html February 3, 2017 page 7, Section B The New York Times External links Category:1917 births Category:2017 deaths Category:Biochemists Category:Biologists from the United States Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:People from New Jersey Category:Rutgers University alumni