Events
1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
1688 - William Cheselden, English surgeon and anatomist
1858 - George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist
1897 - Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani scientist and scholar
1909 - Marguerite Perey, French physicist
1910 - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1916 - Jean Dausset, French immunologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1951 - Demetrios Christodoulou, Greek mathematical physicist
Deaths
1937 - Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
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#6 - Ernest Rutherford
Richard Reeves is probably best known for writing biographies of American Presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan), so it's a little strange to see him turn his hand to scientific biography.
"You wanted to see me, Herr Professor?"
"Hans! Yes, come in, come in. Just going over the account books. Frightful amount of money going out of this place."
"Well, radium is expensive..."
The eighth of the Top Eleven is an experiment by the man who set the gold standard for arrogance in physics.
John, there's a great backstory on the discovery of streptomycin. While Rutgers' Selman Waksman was awarded the Nobel solely, his graduate student Albert Schatz did most of the work and was later recognized as co-discoverer. There are some great newspaper articles on Schatz transcribed at www.albertschatzphd.com.