Harold Boyd Woodruff (July 22, 1917 – January 19, 2017) was an American soil microbiologist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He is known for the discovery of
actinomycin
Dactinomycin, also known as actinomycin D, is a chemotherapy medication used to treat a number of types of cancer. This includes Wilms tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma, trophoblastic neoplasm, testicular cancer, and certain types of ovari ...
, and the development of the industrial production by fermentation of many natural products, including
cyanocobalamin
Cyanocobalamin is a form of vitamin used to treat vitamin deficiency except in the presence of cyanide toxicity. The deficiency may occur in pernicious anemia, following surgical removal of the stomach, with fish tapeworm, or due to bowel ...
(a synthetic form of
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin, is a water-soluble vitamin involved in metabolism. It is one of eight B vitamins. It is required by animals, which use it as a cofactor in DNA synthesis, in both fatty acid and amino acid metabolism. ...
, the
avermectin
The avermectins are a series of drugs and pesticides used to treat parasitic worms and insect pests. They are a group of 16-membered macrocyclic lactone derivatives with potent anthelmintic and insecticidal properties. These naturally occurring c ...
s, and other important antibiotics.
Biography
He was born in Bridgeton, New Jersey into a farming family, that was forced to move out of the state during the Great Depression. His family relocated to
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
,
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
and
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
before returning to his home state. After returning to
Hopewell Township, Cumberland County, New Jersey
Hopewell Township is a township in Cumberland County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is part of the Vineland- Bridgeton metropolitan statistical area for statistical purposes. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population ...
, he was able to make up the half-year of school he lost while in Florida attending a school in Shiloh that required him to walk several miles each day. He later attended Hopewell Township School before moving on to
Bridgeton High School
Bridgeton High School is a comprehensive community public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grades from the city of Bridgeton, in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Bridgeton Public ...
.
He received a bachelor's degree in soil chemistry from
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
, followed by a Ph.D. from the same university in soil microbiology; his advisor was
Selman Waksman
Selman Abraham Waksman (July 22, 1888 – August 16, 1973) was a Jewish Russian-born American inventor, Nobel Prize laureate, biochemist and microbiologist whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discover ...
. In his doctoral work, he discovered the antibiotics
actinomycin
Dactinomycin, also known as actinomycin D, is a chemotherapy medication used to treat a number of types of cancer. This includes Wilms tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma, trophoblastic neoplasm, testicular cancer, and certain types of ovari ...
and streptothricin.Albert Schatz used the leads from Woodruff's development of streptothricin to create
streptomycin
Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, ''Mycobacterium avium'' complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, ''Burkholderia'' infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. F ...
. As part of a lawsuit challenging Schatz's claim as discoverer of streptomycin, Woodruff was awarded 2% of the royalties, which he used to fund a scholarship for students at Rutgers studying microbiology.
He died on January 19, 2017, at the age of 99 at his home in
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', February 3, 2017. Accessed February 4, 2017.
Career
He spent his career as a researcher at Merck & Co., rising to the position of Executive Director of Biological Sciences, and Executive Administrator of the Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Japan.
After retirement, he founded the firm Soil Microbiology Associates together with his wife Jeanette.
Honors
Woodruff was elected to the Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences section of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, received the Waksman Award from the
Theobald Smith
Theobald Smith FRS(For) HFRSE (July 31, 1859 – December 10, 1934) was a pioneering epidemiologist, bacteriologist, pathologist and professor. Smith is widely considered to be America's first internationally-significant medical research scienti ...
Society in 2007, and received the
NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science
The NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for original scientific work of intrinsic scientific importance and with significant, beneficial applications in industry."
List of Reci ...