Dubos, René Jules

Related Category: Medicine: Biographies

(rənā´ zhül dübō´), 1901–82, American bacteriologist, b. France, Ph.D. Rutgers, 1927. He joined the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller Univ.) in 1927 and became professor there in 1957. While researching the properties of soil bacteria he isolated, in crystalline form, the antibiotic gramicidin that destroys Gram-positive germs. This work laid the basis of a new field of chemotherapy. A prolific writer, his books include Reason Awake: Science for Man (1970), Man Adapting (1965, repr. 1980), and Celebrations of Life (1981).