Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau: Bringing Penicillin to the Masses

By Linda Harris Sittig

When you’ve developed an infection and the doctor prescribes penicillin, what image comes to mind?

A needle, some pills, perhaps the pink medicinal liquid?

How about a cantaloupe?

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. However, because the antibiotic was so difficult to extract from the mold that created it, only a handful of people received the antibiotic within the first decade of its availability.

The creation of penicillin was one of the greatest medical creations of the 20^th century. Before, people with life-threatening bacterial infections did not survive: like one of my grandfathers.

But it would take the groundbreaking work of Margaret Hutchison to enable the pharmacology companies to mass-produce this life-saving drug.

Margaret’s Story

Born on October 27, 1910, in Houston, Texas, Margaret’s father was a clothing store owner, and her mother was a housemaker. Even from childhood, Margaret showed a vivid interest in science. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Rice Institute (Texas) in 1932 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T. (Boston) in 1937. At the age of 27, Margaret was the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. Decades later, she would become the first female member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

After finishing her Ph.D., she married William C. Rousseau, whom she met while working in Boston for E.B. Badger, a design company in the chemical engineering industry. While working for Badger, Margaret designed a production process for synthetic rubber. Next, she helped to develop the process of high-octane gas for aviation fuel—a boon for the American military in WWII.

Intrigued by the challenge of mass-producing penicillin, she turned to the research showing how mold from cantaloupes was an effective source for extracting the necessary ingredients to produce the anti-bacterial drug.

First, her research team revised a fermentation process with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Then, she took her team to Brooklyn, N.Y. where they converted an old ice factory into a penicillin production facility.

The challenge and the difficulties were enormous, but they successfully developed a deep-tank fermentation process that could generate large quantities of mold, readily available to be made into penicillin.

Margaret continued to collaborate with other scientists using her research on fermentation coupled with the petrochemical process of engineering to help companies mass produce penicillin under the auspices of the U.S. War Production Board.

The Legacy of Margaret’s Work

In the first half of 1944, her research led to the production of almost 2.3 million doses of penicillin. Just a few weeks later came the invasion of Normandy that Americans call D-Day. Penicillin saved countless lives of the injured.

The estimate of how many soldiers’ lives were saved by penicillin in WWII is fifteen percent. Compare that to the American Civil War, where 3/5 of the Union troops and 2/3 of the Confederate troops died from infectious bacterial disease.

After WWII, penicillin was made available to the general public on March 15, 1945.

Scientists Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing penicillin. Dorothy Hodgkin received a Nobel Prize later for her discovery of the structure of penicillin.

But it was the legacy of Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau that brough penicillin to the people.

While we wait in anticipation for a vaccine for Covid 19, remember Margaret and the lowly cantaloupe. Sometimes sought-after results come from surprising sources.

Thank you to Cort Johns, a blog follower from the Netherlands who alerted me to Margaret’s story.

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