Turning Terror into a Scientific Memoir
Interview with Steffanie Strathdee, author of The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug
Bill Sullivan
In 1915, microbiologist Frederick Twort occasionally noticed clear areas disrupting the growth of bacteria on his culture dishes. Twort found that the fluid in these clear areas contained a powerful substance that could kill bacteria. Following up on these observations at his laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1917, microbiologist Félix d’Herelle theorized these agents might be viruses and called them “bacteriophages.” He proposed that these phages could be used therapeutically to save millions of people from deadly infections.