Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown

Drs. Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown were the co-discoverers of nystatin, the first safe and effective antifungal antibiotic, and among the first three women inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (1994). Nystatin is considered the most important biomedical breakthrough since the discovery of penicillin. Orphaned at age 3, Dr. Hazen earned her PhD in microbiology at the age of 42 before joining the New York State Department of Health. There, she collaborated with Dr. Brown, an organic chemist, whose education had been financed by a wealthy family friend after her father’s desertion of the family. Dr. Hazen discovered the organism in soil at a farm in Virginia. Dr. Brown conducted the chemical analyses and then purified the microorganism. Hazen and Brown established a fund with the royalties that came from producing the drug, which provided grants to scientists in the fields of biochemistry, microbiology, and immunology throughout the life of the patent. Hazen and Brown continued to collaborate after the groundbreaking and historic effort for nystatin. That continued effort resulted in the antibacterial agent phalamycin in 1953 and the antifungal agent capacidin in 1959. The chapter contains a discussion of the history of organisms discovered in the soil that are medically important microbes.