Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 as a result of a coincidental observation, but modern medicine also owes thanks to the microbiologist Selman Waksman, who subsequently helped develop a platform for studying the antimicrobial activity of various microbes by detecting zones of growth inhibition of susceptible microorganisms on Petri dishes. Waksman and his team used the approach to isolate some 20 new antibiotics from soil microbes, including streptomycin, the first to work against tuberculosis. This method was successfully applied by
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