Elizabeth Bugie

Bugie's father, Charles Bugie, never studied beyond high school, and was committed to her education.[1] Her mother was Madeline Turbett. Bugie studied microbiology at the New Jersey College for Women.[1] She was a Masters student at Rutgers University, working with Selman Waksman.[1] She developed several antimicrobial substances.[2][3] Her Masters thesis, Production of antibiotic substances by aspergillus flavus and chaetomium cochliodes, looked to optimise the production of flavicin and chaetomin.[4]

Bugie worked on antimicrobials that could protect plants from Dutch elm disease.[5] In 1944 Bugie, Waksman and Schatz identified streptomycin in cultures of soil organisms, an antibiotic which was found to be active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.[6][7] Bugie was told that it was not important for her name to be on the patent as she would "one day get married and have a family".[1][8] Selman Waksman went on to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1952 and took all the credit for the discovery.[1] Waksman claimed that Bugie was more involved in the discovery than Albert Schatz.[9][10] Bugie was eventually awarded 0.2% of the royalties for streptomycin.[11] After the discovery of streptomycin, Bugie worked on micromonosporin, a pigmented glycoprotein that was active against gram-positive bacteria.[12] Bugie worked for Merck & Co., evaluating pyrazinoic acid and penicillin as antibiotics against mycobacterium tuberculosis.[13] After raising her family, Bugie eventually returned to academia to study library science.[1]

Bugie's daughter, Eileen Gregory, is a microbiologist at Rollins College.[1] Bugie died on April 10, 2001.