A graduate student's lab work produced the first cure for tuberculosis
In 1943, Albert Schatz, a PhD student in Selman Waksman's Rutgers laboratory, isolated streptomycin from a soil bacterium — the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, which had killed millions with no reliable treatment. Waksman alone received the 1952 Nobel Prize, a decision Schatz contested; after Schatz sued, both men were formally recognized as co-discoverers on the streptomycin patent.