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C h e m i c a l a n d E n g i n e e r i n g N e w s : D e c e m b e r 1 0 , 1 9 5 2 Print Article | Open Image Viewer Nobel-esse Oblige? National Agricultural College (Bucks County, Pa.), quick to sense a possible injustice to a faculty member, has dispatched a letter to the Nobel Committee for Medicine regarding the 1951 Nobel Prize. Albert Schatz, professor of microbiology at NAC, was not included when the committee recently awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Selman Waksman of Rutgers. Elmer S. Reinthaler, NAC vice president, said in his letter that the committee was probably unaware of the role Schatz played in the streptomycin research and requested the committee to consider giving Schatz recognition for his contribution to the discovery of the antibiotic. Part of the evidence Reinthaler submitted to the committee was an account of the suit Schatz filed against Waksman and details of the subsequent settlement in which Schatz won public recognition for his part in the discovery plus a share in the streptomycin royalties (see C&EN, Jan. 15, 1951, page 205). What National Agricultural College may not have considered is that the Nobel committee may have based its award on Dr. Waksman's life work rather than the discovery of streptomycin alone.
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