A Tale of Two Freds

by Elio

Re­cently, I par­tic­i­pated in a cer­e­mony at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in Ann Ar­bor hon­or­ing their De­part­ment of Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy for its con­tri­bu­tions to our sci­ence. The ASM tan­gi­bly rec­og­nizes "Mile­stone Sites" by pro­vid­ing a plaque that briefly chron­i­cles the achieve­ments of the place. Michigan's was per­haps the first mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy de­part­ment in the United States. It was founded in 1904 by Fred­er­ick Novy and was pre­ceded in 1890 by the first re­quired bac­te­ri­ol­ogy course in any U.S. med­ical school. It has had an un­in­ter­rupted his­tory of first-rate re­search and ed­u­ca­tional achieve­ments. Many of the grad­u­ates of this de­part­ment have gone on to make out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions of their own. So, this honor is highly de­served.

Fig­ure 1. Powel Kazan­jian, Elio, the Plaque, U. of Michi­gan pres­i­dent Mark Schlis­sel, Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy chair­man Harry Mob­ley. (Cour­tesy, Anne Dempsey, ASM)

The cer­e­mony be­gan with a most ex­cit­ing ac­count of the life and pro­fes­sional achieve­ments of Novy, pre­sented by Dr. Powel Kazan­jian, the chief of the in­fec­tious dis­ease ser­vice at the med­ical school. Be­sides his M.D., Dr. Kazan­jian holds the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing got­ten a Ph.D. in his­tory, hav­ing writ­ten his the­sis on Novy. He de­scribed the life of this pi­o­neer in Amer­i­can mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy and how he helped de­velop the bud­ding field of what was then called bac­te­ri­ol­ogy. Novy ob­tained a Sc.D. de­gree in 1890. He then got an M.D. de­gree and be­came an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of hy­giene and phys­i­o­log­i­cal chem­istry. He vis­ited sev­eral labs in Eu­rope in­clud­ing those of Pas­teur and Koch. Af­ter his re­turn, he soon be­came one of the fore­most bac­te­ri­ol­o­gists in the U.S. Per­haps re­flect­ing the tenor of the times, his in­ter­ests ranged quite far, in­clud­ing the study of spiro­chetes, anaer­o­bic bac­te­ria (be­fore be­ing called Clostrid­ium per­frin­gens, this species' name was C. novyi), pro­tists (try­panosomes), and viruses.

Fig­ure 2. Fred­er­ick G. Novy (1854–1957). Source

Dr. Kazanjian's talk em­pha­sized Novy's in­ter­est in the wider at­trib­utes of mi­crobes. Based on a solid back­ground in chem­istry, Novy em­braced the emerg­ing field of bac­te­r­ial phys­i­ol­ogy. Thus, he de­vel­oped tech­niques for cul­ti­vat­ing anaer­obes and for study­ing bac­te­r­ial tox­ins. His was one of the ear­li­est ap­pa­ra­tus for mea­sur­ing bac­te­r­ial res­pi­ra­tion. I came away with the dis­tinct im­pres­sion that Novy would have been a true soul mate of cur­rent day mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists, prob­a­bly more so than many of his fa­mous con­tem­po­raries. It gets bet­ter. To quote from Dr. Kazanjian's the­sis: "The mean­ings of Novy's sci­ence in Amer­i­can so­ci­ety can be viewed through the novel Ar­row­smith, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Novy's ac­tiv­i­ties as told by his stu­dent, Paul de Kruif. Sin­clair Lewis, who col­lab­o­rated with de Kruif to write Ar­row­smith, of­fered lab­o­ra­tory sci­ence as hav­ing po­ten­tial to pro­vide a res­o­nant truth and sub­stance to an early 20^th cen­tury Amer­i­can so­ci­ety por­trayed as bereft of mean­ing."

The his­tory of the Michi­gan de­part­ment par­al­lels that of ASM, which was founded in 1899. Novy be­came its fifth pres­i­dent and was fol­lowed in that po­si­tion by three other mem­bers of the de­part­ment, Thomas Rivers, Wal­ter Nungester, and Fred Nei­d­hardt. The So­ci­ety met twice in Ann Ar­bor and had its head­quar­ters there for sev­eral years. The list of em­i­nent Michi­gan mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists is too long for now, but I need to men­tion my friend and long-time col­league, Fred Nei­d­hardt. I sin­gle him out be­cause in ad­di­tion to his pow­er­ful sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies, his chair­man­ship of the de­part­ment is cel­e­brated for his in­tro­duc­tion of par­tic­i­pa­tory man­age­ment, an op­er­at­ing mode then unique in med­ical schools. The cur­rent chair, Harry Mob­ley, has suc­cess­fully con­tin­ued it.

A few more words about the oc­ca­sion. The un­veil­ing of the plaque was fol­lowed by a live pod­cast of This Week in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy in which sev­eral mem­bers of the de­part­ment par­tic­i­pated. Af­ter­wards, we had the plea­sure of at­tend­ing the sym­po­sium hon­or­ing Rolf Freter and Fred Nei­d­hardt, pre­sented by Manuela Raf­fatellu of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine and Sam Miller from the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton at Seat­tle.

ASM's pro­gram, Mile­stones in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy aims "to pro­mote greater aware­ness and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy" as well as "to fos­ter in­ter­est in the nation's mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal her­itage and to re­mind cit­i­zens, ed­u­ca­tors and "vis­i­tors" of the im­por­tance of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. "The Michi­gan award is the 12^th in the program's his­tory. The pro­gram is run by the Cen­ter for the His­tory of Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy/ASM Archives (CHOMA) Com­mit­tee (full dis­clo­sure: I'm a mem­ber of this com­mit­tee).