Science Diction: The Origin Of 'Antibiotic'

Posted Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 06:00PM on NPR Topics: Science

Selman Waksman, the microbiologist who discovered streptomycin, first used the word "antibiotic" in the medical sense in 1943. Science historian Howard Markel talks about how it was actually a naval officer who first coined "antibiotic" in 1860, to describe an opposition to the belief in life beyond [ read more… ]