Biographical Memoirs Volume 58 (1989) / Chapter Skim
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René Jules Dubos
René Jules Dubos
Pages 132-161
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HIRSCH AND CAROL L MOBERG REN~ JULES DUBOS, microbiologist and humanistphilosopher, was professor emeritus at The Rockefeller University at the time of his death in New York City on his gist birthday, February 20, 1982.
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to the concept of the environment as a moIcting force on historical events, particularly on the human psyche. At age eighteen he applied to the Ecole cle Physique et Chimie, but another attack of rheumatic fever caused him to miss the entrance examination.
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In the course of his translation duties Rene encountered an article that he considered the major influence in his life. While sitting in the Palatine Gardens on a warm May (lay, instead of reacting about fertilizers in a semipopular journal, he turned to an article by the famous Russian soil microbiologist Serge Winogradsky, then at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
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Dubos earned extra money working part time as an animal caretaker at nearby Johnson & Johnson, tutoring the research director's children, washing laboratory glassware on holidays, and translating papers on poultry pathology for a young professor.
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The secretary who sent the rejection letter penned a note at the bottom recommencing that he consult with a fellow Frenchman, Alexis Carrel, at The Rockefeller Institute in New York. This chance event led Rene to The Rockefeller, where he was clestined to spend some fifty years of his life.
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The microbiology period, from 1927 to 1944, was devoted to demonstrating that bacteria nourished in the proper environment can produce enzymes specific to those bacteria and to showing that bacteria have genetic mechanisms. During the tuberculosis and experimental pathology period from 1944 to 1960, certain products of bacteria were shown to stimulate immunity, ant]
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are cleterminecT more by surroundings than by the mere presence or absence of microbes. The microbiology period began with Dubos working alone in a small laboratory on the sixth floor of The Rockefeller Institute Hospital.
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In the mid-1930s Rene ant! colleagues used the soil enrichment technique to isolate bacterial enzymes that clestroyed creatinine and enzymes that converted creatine into creatinine.
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Dubos's antibiotics are not the ones widely used for the treatment of bacterial infections, yet he was a true pioneer in the clevelopment of antibiotics the most momentous development in the history of meclical science. By 1941, when Rene was barely forty, the publicity surrounding his discovery of tyrothricin tract made him a famous man.
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As George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology and Tropical Medicine at Harvard from 1942 to 1944, Rene had minimal teaching and administrative responsibilities and could concentrate on research. His letter of acceptance stated his wish to study the physiology and immunology of the tubercle bacillus and tuberculosis infection an investigation stimulated by the illness ant!
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Several of Dubos's papers escribe the use of these wetting agents (specifically the cletergent Tween) and other factors such as albumin and fatty acids—that led to vigorous, clispersed growth of tubercle bacilli.
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bed rest was not neeclecI. While the tuberculosis clinicians initially were reluctant to accept this result, it was confirmed and led to the closing of tuberculosis sanitaria, marking the ens]
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some of his emerging convictions about what causes disease. He conducted stuclies on the influence of metabolic factors, nutrition, and environmental stresses on host resistance to various infectious diseases.
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He cautioned that humans are so well actjustec} to their surroundings that they no longer mind the stench of automobile exhausts, ugly urban sprawl, "starless skies, treeless avenues, shapeless buildings, tasteless bread, joyless celebrations." He further warned that man's ability to adapt unconsciously to environmental threats means that basic human values will inevitably be destroyed. The book inspired concerned citizens with ideas and motivations for intelligent social action to combat environmental problems.
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presented a balancect primer: Man can improve on nature and even remove environmental clegraciation through deliberate social action, and the responsible use of scientific knowledge and technology are invaluable to these pursuits. His "Think globally and act locally" became the slogan of environmental activists anct is still frequently quoted.
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Those of us who knew Rene as a friend recall personal habits and strengths the public man did not reveal. The outward manifestations of his life were plain and simple, sheltering an intense dedication to his work.
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There he lecI cliscussions on the latest scientific news or, more arclently, on the unusual profusion of interests he tract outside the lab. Whether it was growing truffles in the laboratory, infections that proclucec!
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to a philosophy of scientific humanism by perceiving that all forms of life on earth are integrated components. Rene will be remembered for formulating broad questions affecting human life, many of which are not yet ripe for solution.
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Hutchinson Medal, Garden Club of America 1972 Prix de l'Institut de la Vie, Paris 1973 Bradford Washburn Award, Boston Museum of Science 1975 Cullum Geographical Medal, American Geographic Society 1976 Tyler Ecology Award, Pepperdine University 1979 Wilder Penfield Award, Vanier Institute of the Family 1979 Member, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters HONORARY DEGREES Forty-one honorary degrees, including three honorary doctorates of medicine, from thirty American and eleven foreign institutions, 1941 through 1981
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Med., 55:377-91. 1935 Studies on the mechanism of production of a specific bacterial enzyme which decomposes the capsular polysaccharide of type III pneumococcus.
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Miller. The production of bacterial enzymes capable of decomposing creatinine.
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Davis, Gardner Middlebrook, and Cynthia Pierce. The effect of water soluble lipids on the growth and biological properties of tubercle bacilli.
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The effect of wetting agents on the growth of tubercle bacilli.
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Am., 192:31-35. Effect of metabolic factors on the susceptibility of albino mice to experimental tuberculosis.
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Reprinted: New York: Doubleday Anchor (1961~; New York: Harper Perennial Library (1971~; New York: Harper Colophon Books (1979~; New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press (1987~. 1960 Pasteur and Modern Science.
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Pierce-Chase. A genetic study of susceptibility to experimental tuberculosis in mice infected with mammalian tubercle bacilli.
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The human environment in technological societies. Rockefeller Univ.
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With Barbara Ward. Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet.
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162-73. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.
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