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Teagan Lopez-Schrammel

Anna Thompson

BIOL 210

Oct 7, 2021

Historical Microbiologist-Irving Millman

Irving Millman was born on May 23, 1923and died at 88 on April 17, 2012. Millman was most well known for discovering the Hepatitis B Vaccine. Hepatitis B is an infectious virus that can lead to chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and a deadly form of cancer. More than 1 billion people worldwide have received the vaccine since it became commercially available in 1982. Because of the protection, it provides against liver cancer, it has been called the first “cancer vaccine.”

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Dr. Millman was the only trained immunologist on an eclectic team of hepatitis researchers at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Leading the team was scientist Baruch S. Blumberg, a future Nobel laureate.

Part biochemist and part anthropologist, Blumberg had spent the previous decade collecting blood samples from populations around the world for the study of infectious disease. Using the serum from an Australian aborigine, he had identified the hepatitis B virus. He received the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine for that work and died last year at 85.

Once Blumberg had isolated the virus, the challenge was to halt its transmission from one person to another. Dr. Millman’s arrival at the Fox Chase laboratory in 1967, Blumberg wrote in an essay, was “perhaps the most important factor” in making the breakthrough discovery.

Without Dr. Millman, Blumberg told the Jewish Exponent in 1993, “we couldn’t have made that vaccine, no question about it.”

Dr. Millman launched his career at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where he did research on a tuberculosis vaccine in the 1950s. Later, he joined the Merck pharmaceutical company and worked on vaccines for whooping cough and rubella.

During his career with Fox Chase, Dr. Millman also conducted research on the bacterium linked to acne and taught microbiology at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia. He retired in 1989.

It has been said that the hepatitis B vaccine improved global health conditions so dramatically that the average human life span may have increased by several months since the vaccine was introduced.“Not many people can say they have had an impact like that,” Fox Chase scientific director Jonathan Chernoff wrote in an e-mail.

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Luc Montagnier & Robert Gallo By Emily Storm

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Luc Montagnier & Robert Gallo By Emily Storm

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Nohemi Sanchez

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(robert)

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Alice Catherine Evans was born on January 29, 1881 in Neath, Pennsylvania. She died ninety-four years later on September 5, 1975 in Arlington, Virginia. Respected in the fields of microbiology and bacteriology, Evans completed revolutionary work in discovering a dangerous disease, brucellosis, caused by milk. This was especially significant because she was a woman working in a male-dominated field. Evans’ career began when she joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture, inspecting bacteriology in milk and cheese (Britannica). Prior to accepting this job, she had earned both her B.S. and M.S. degrees in bacteriology and even taught for a few years. While holding this position, Evans discovered the bacterial infection brucellosis, which she observed held the capacity of causing sudden abortions in animals and giving humans remittent fever (Britannica). In fact, starting in 1922, Evans even battled the disease for many years (Britannica). She drew the informed conclusion that this infection is a threat to both humans and animals, and in order to protect ourselves and make dairy safe, we must pasteurize it.

Evans publicly shared her research in 1918, but received ignorance and disbelief as a response. Years later, Evans’ work was gradually becoming accepted. Today, Evans is respected because she helped people become aware of the real hazard milk causes when it's not pasteurized. As pasteurization became more common, the cases of brucellosis declined, thus making Evans a hero (Britannica).

Works Cited

Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Alice Evans: American Scientist”, Britannica, September 1, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Evans, date accessed October 12, 2021

(Catherine)

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One of the things that we have to cover is a Historical Overview of Microbiology. For this assignment, you can sign up for a microbiologist to research - see week 6 in Canvas

For your microbiologist I want you to prepare a 1 page report including the following:
Name
When did this person live
Why are they famous? - explain their most important accomplishment - make sure to set this within the context of the times
Picture
When you are done, upload the file here for everyone to see. Read through at least 3 other assignments and leave a comment with your name in parenthesis (Anna).