Rachel Fuller Brown Letter

Rachel Fuller Bown was an American chemist best known for her work with the microbiologist Elizabeth Lee Hazen in developing the antifungal antibiotic, nystatin. Born on November 23, 1898, Brown spent her childhood between Springfield, Massachusetts and Webster Groves, Missouri. She attended Mount Holyoke College with the support of a local benefactor and received her B.A. in chemistry and history in 1920. Brown would then go on to attend the University of Chicago, where she would then earn her Master of Chemistry degree. She briefly worked for an all-girls school before returning to the University of Chicago for her Ph.D. in chemistry and bacteriology.

While receiving her Ph.D., Brown began working for the Division of Laboratories and Research in Albany, N.Y. It was there she began working with Elizabeth Lee Hazen, who was based in New York City. The two began working on an antibiotic that would also fight fungal diseases. Due to the distance, Brown and Hazen would send samples to each other via the U.S. Postal Service. Hazen would take samples of organisms from soil and test their effectiveness against fungi, which would then be sent to Brown, who would test the organisms’ toxicity in animals. After hundreds of samples, the two eventually found one that killed fungi but was not toxic to animals. They named the organism Streptomyces noursei, after the Nourses family, whose garden the sample came from. The antibiotic produced from these organisms was called nystatin, after New York State. Nystatin became available for human use in 1954.

Brown and Hazen continued working together for the remainder of their careers. They developed two more antibiotics together until both of their retirements. Brown was a member of the American Association of University Women as well as a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. She was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the New Yok Department of Health as well as the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists, of which she and Hazen were the first female recipients.

Rachel Fuller Brown passed away on January 14, 1980, in Albany, New York.