Selman Waksman Quotes

When antibiotics became industrially produced following World War II, our quality of life and our longevity improved enormously. No one thought bacteria were going to become resistant.

Why some gonococcal strains are more resistant than others is still not clear.

Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. Smart use of antibiotics is the key to controlling its spread.

The organic material, as the laws of chemistry state, can neither be created nor destroyed.

Antibiotics vary greatly in their chemical nature, mode of action upon different organisms, and effect upon the animal body. The selective action of antibiotics upon bacteria and other microorganisms is known as the antibiotic spectrum. Some antibiotics are characterized by a very narrow spectrum, whereas others possess a wide range of activity.

In bitter almond oil, like in a great number of other substances that previously had been counted among the 'aromatic compounds' on behalf of their strong smell, a derivative of benzene is present. The special properties of benzene and its derivatives are caused by the typical arrangement of their carbon atoms.

When antibiotics first came out, nobody could have imagined we'd have the resistance problem we face today. We didn't give bacteria credit for being able to change and adapt so fast.

I started my scientific work by putting forward a hypothesis on the arrangement of atoms in nitrogen-containing molecules.

MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is an important cause of healthcare-associated infections.

The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are. It basically shows us that the end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics.

When we prescribe antibiotics for a strep throat, it's not even for the strep throat. It's for the complications of the strep throat.

I've started to think it must just be chemistry, in which case we're looking for the Shift and we haven't found it yet.

I expect that essential oils may some day prove a vital weapon in the fight against strains of antibiotic-resi stant bacteria.

The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.

What chemists took from Dalton was not new experimental laws but a new way of practicing chemistry (he himself called it the 'new system of chemical philosophy'), and this proved so rapidly fruitful that only a few of the older chemists in France and Britain were able to resist it.

I do not know whether you are fond of chemical reading. There are some things in this science worth reading.

Chemistry is like an indefinable thing. When it comes to people playing your best friend or your parents or anything like that, there's always different kind of element to chemistry.

If at the first sign of infection, you always jump in with antibiotics, you do not give the immune system a chance to grow stronger.

Dead is when the chemists take over the subject.

Chemistry cannot be purchased.

I came here with the perfect chemist's perception. The formula they had was perfect and any added ingredient could make it go bad or worse.

I figure I've done what I could do, more or less, and now I'm going back to being a chemical; all we are is a lot of talking nitrogen, you know.

You don't buy chemistry, nor do you manufacture it, it is what it is.

I think chemistry is about not acting, but reacting, and not talking, but listening.

Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry.