12/21/2025
An amazing true story about two incredible women who achieved scientific history in a time when women were not seen in science at all.
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In 1948, antibiotics were being hailed as modern miracles. Penicillin and streptomycin were saving lives on an unprecedented scale. But inside hospitals, a dangerous pattern was emerging that few wanted to confront.
Patients survived bacterial infections only to be consumed by fungal ones.
Antibiotics wiped out bacteria indiscriminately, including the beneficial kinds that kept fungi in check. Thrush, systemic yeast infections, and deadly fungal diseases spread through wards filled with children, soldiers, and pneumonia survivors. Every antifungal compound available at the time carried the same fatal flaw. It killed the fungus and the patient.
Elizabeth Lee Hazen understood what that meant. A microbiologist working for the New York State Department of Health, she believed the answer already existed, hidden where microbes had been fighting each other for millions of years.
In the soil.
Elizabeth began collecting dirt. Fields. Roadsides. Farms. Any place life had learned to survive by outcompeting other life. She cultured organisms from each sample and tested them against dangerous fungi such as Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. When she saw something promising, she sealed it in a mason jar and mailed it to Albany.
There, chemist Rachel Fuller Brown waited.
Rachel’s role was more dangerous. She isolated the active compounds and tested whether they were toxic. Most samples failed instantly. Some killed fungus but also killed laboratory animals within minutes. Others did nothing at all. The jars traveled back and forth through the postal system, unnoticed by everyone except the two women who refused to stop.
Hundreds of failures passed.
Then one jar arrived containing soil from a dairy farm in Fauquier County, Virginia.
Elizabeth saw strong antifungal activity and sent the culture to Rachel. Rachel isolated two compounds. One failed. The second behaved differently. It destroyed fungal cells while leaving mammalian cells unharmed.
They had done what no one else had managed.
The bacterium was named Streptomyces noursei after the farm family who sent the soil. The compound was named nystatin after the New York State Department of Health. In 1950, the discovery was presented to the National Academy of Sciences. By 1954, nystatin reached hospitals.
For the first time, doctors could treat fungal infections safely.
Nystatin saved patients who needed antibiotics without condemning them to fatal fungal disease. It cured thrush, vaginal yeast infections, intestinal infections, and systemic illnesses that had once been death sentences.
Then it did something no one expected.
In 1966, catastrophic flooding in Florence soaked priceless Renaissance art in polluted water. Mold spread rapidly. Restorers tested dozens of chemicals. Only one killed the fungus without damaging pigments.
Nystatin.
It saved thousands of artworks, including Vasari’s Last Supper and the collections of the Biblioteca Nazionale. Later, it protected crops, fought Dutch Elm disease, and preserved historical archives.
The royalties were enormous. More than $13 million by 1976.
Hazen and Brown kept none of it.
They had already donated the patent to a nonprofit organization. The income created the Brown Hazen Fund, supporting scientific research and future scientists, particularly women.
Both knew what it meant to be overlooked. Elizabeth was orphaned by age 3 and raised where girls were not expected to be educated. Rachel was abandoned by her father at 14 and relied on a benefactor to attend college. They never forgot how fragile opportunity could be.
They worked together for decades, discovered two more antibiotics, and became the first women to receive the Chemical Pioneer Award. In 1994, they were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Two women. Two laboratories. Hundreds of jars.
A cure the world nearly missed.
