Papers in Marine Biology and Oceanography, Suppl. lo vol. .1 of" Deep-Sea Research, pp. I.'i-I9. 



Marine bacteria 



Recollections and problems 



By Selman a. Waksman 

 Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers University 



Early in the spring of 1931 I received a telephone call from the venerable biologist, 

 Professor Edwin Conklin of Princeton University, to the effect that Professor Henry 

 BiGELOW of Harvard was visiting him that day. They were discussing organizational 

 plans for the newly established Oceanographic Institution at Woods Hole, Mass. 

 The question had come up as to whether it would be desirable to establish a project 

 in marine bacteriology at the Institution. Would I care to come to Princeton and 

 present my ideas concerning the potentialities in this field of research? 



I could lay claim to only very limited knowledge of marine bacteria. What little 

 knowledge I had was based on a certain familiarity with a few problems in which 

 marine bacteria were involved. One of these was concerned with precipitation of lime 

 in sea-water. Just prior to World War I, a British bacteriologist. Dr. G. H. Drew, 

 made a study of the precipitation of lime in tropical and subtropical water, notably 

 in the region of the Bahamas. Drew reported this process to be a result of bacterial 

 action. Certain groups of bacteria concerned with the reduction of nitrate to atmo- 

 spheric nitrogen, or the so-called " denitrifying " types, were said to be primarily 

 involved in the process. The untimely death of Dr. Drew in 1913 brought an end to 

 these investigations. 



Seven or eight years later. Professor Charles Lipman of the University of California 

 became interested in this problem. Together with an assistant, he spent two or three 

 summers in the laboratory of the Dry Tortugas, in an attempt to confirm Drews' 

 results. Prof. Lipman visited me on several occasions and we had an opportunity to 

 discuss this problem in detail. It appeared to me that the final answer had not been 

 reached, certainly not as regards the role of bacteria in the process. 



In 1929, a group of geologists from Princeton, headed by Professor Richard M. 

 Field, organized an expedition to the Bahamas, particularly Andros Island, for the 

 purpose of studying in detail this precipitation problem. Since " drewite ", the name 

 given to the lime formation, was believed to be of bacteriological origin, it was felt 

 that it would be desirable to have a bacteriologist participate. I was invited, but 

 declined, because neither my available time nor my scientific interests, I felt, would 

 permit me to do justice to the study. I was at that time on the point of developing a 

 comprehensive study of " organic matter decomposition by micro-organisms and of 

 humus formation ", and could not, therefore, afford to undertake a new problem 

 that would require at least several months of my time. The Princeton group decided 

 to invite a qualified bacteriologist interested in this problem. On my part, I promised 

 to make facilities available in my laboratory for this study. 



In 1930, Dr. W. Bavendamm, a German bacteriologist, came to this country to 

 spend six months working on this problem. He was immediately placed in our 



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