Two Scientists. Two Cities. One Revolutionary Collaboration.

Beginning in the 1940s, National Inventors Hall of Fame^® Inductees Rachel Fuller Brown and Elizabeth Lee Hazen took on an important investigation for the New York State Department of Health. Though they lived about 150 miles apart, they maintained a collaboration that would result in the world’s first successful fungus-fighting antibiotic: nystatin. 

Who Was Rachel Fuller Brown?

Brown was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1898. She was an excellent student, but because her family’s finances were limited, she might not have had the opportunity to attend college had her grandmother’s friend not offered financial support for her education. 

Brown attended Mount Holyoke College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in history and chemistry in 1920. She then earned her master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1921. After taking a teaching position at a private school for girls, Brown returned to her studies, earning her doctorate in chemistry and bacteriology from the University of Chicago in 1933.

With her earnings from teaching, both at the private school and as a teaching assistant in graduate school, Brown was able to repay the financial support she’d needed to fund her education. Throughout her life, she remained dedicated to helping more people access educational opportunities like those that had been extended to her.

Before defending her doctoral dissertation, Brown joined the New York State Health Department’s Division of Laboratories and Research, where she found a faster, less expensive screening test for syphilis, identified 40 types of pneumonia and created antiserums for all of them. In 1948, she would make her most important discovery alongside Hazen.

Who Was Elizabeth Lee Hazen?

Hazen was born in Rich, Mississippi, in 1885. Growing up, she attended a one-room, one-teacher public school. Like Brown, Hazen was an exceptional student, and she loved to read.

In 1905, Hazen entered the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College (later named the Mississippi University for Women), where she developed an interest in science and physiology. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1910, she taught high school physics and biology in Jackson, Mississippi. She continued her education through summer studies at the University of Tennessee and the University of Virginia, then moved to New York for graduate school at Columbia University. After Hazen earned her master’s degree in biology in 1917, she entered the medical bacteriology program at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. 

During World War I, Hazen served as an Army diagnostic laboratory technician in Alabama and New York. She then became assistant director of the clinical laboratory of a hospital in West Virginia. In 1923, she returned to Columbia, earning her doctorate in microbiology in 1927.

After taking on clinical and teaching positions at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Hazen joined the New York State Department of Health. Here, she accepted a leadership role in the Bacterial Diagnosis Laboratory in New York City in 1931. Thirteen years later, she was offered an assignment that would shape the future of medicine.
 

How Did Brown and Hazen Manage a Long-Distance Collaboration?

In 1944, Hazen was tasked with leading an investigation into fungi and their relation to bacteria and other microbes. While returning to Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons to study mycology, at the New York State Department of Health, she established a collection of disease-causing fungi that was used for identifying microorganisms in specimens submitted by physicians across New York. Using a soil sample technique, Hazen had identified new antifungal agents by 1948. 

To continue this investigation, Brown was selected to assist in Hazen’s research. The two scientists did not live near each other — Brown was in Albany and Hazen was in New York City — but they were able to overcome the distance by relying on the U.S. Postal Service to exchange soil samples and information. 

In her laboratory, Hazen cultured organisms found in the soil samples and tested them in vitro for activity against two fungi: Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. When she found such activity, she would mail that culture to Brown in a jar. Brown focused on finding specific antifungal agents from the samples Hazen sent. Once she identified these agents, she mailed the sample back to Hazen, who would perform further testing.

Through this process, Brown and Hazen initially found that each agent that killed the test fungi was in turn highly toxic to animals. However, Hazen eventually discovered that soil from the garden of her friend, Walter B. Nourse, provided a promising culture. She named the agent Streptomyces noursei after Nourse.

The antibiotic Brown and Hazen developed from this important discovery was named "nystatin" for the New York State Department of Health. Introduced in practical form in 1954 following Food and Drug Administration approval, nystatin was patented in 1957. It not only cured many severe fungal infections of the skin and digestive system, but it also could be combined with antibacterial drugs to balance their effects. 

How Did Nystatin Make an Impact?

The development of an antifungal drug was especially impactful in the 1950s because broad-spectrum antibiotics had been used more frequently through the beginning of the 20th century. These antibiotics were so potent that they killed a wide variety of bacteria; however,  they were so thorough that no healthy bacteria were left to keep fungi under control. Nystatin proved invaluable for secondary infections caused by broad-spectrum antibiotics.

In addition to treating a variety of infections and helping patients who are healing from burns or receiving organ transplants or chemotherapy, uses for nystatin have been as varied as treating Dutch elm disease and rescuing water-damaged works of art from molds.

Earning millions in royalties, Brown and Hazen donated their earnings to the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement, which had previously assisted the co-inventors in obtaining a patent for their drug. The nonprofit used this funding to both further scientific research and establish the Brown-Hazen Research Fund.

For their trailblazing research in antifungal medicine, Brown and Hazen received awards including the Squibb Award in Chemotherapy in 1955 and the Distinguished Service Award from the New York State Department of Health in 1968. In 1975, they became the first women to receive the Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists.

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