Frederick George Novy (1864-1957), an American microbiologist and bacteriologist, was born on December 09, 1864 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a tailor and a milliner, both émigrés from Bohemia. As a high school student, Novy developed an interest in chemistry, which he studied at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1886. After graduation, he remained on campus -- where, indeed, he would stay for the rest of his career -- to pursue graduate studies and to work as assistant to Albert Prescott, an organic chemist. By 1887, when he earned a Masters degree for his studies of cocaine, his interests had already begun to shift, and that year he joined the Department of Hygiene and Physiological Chemistry where he completed his doctorate in 1890, followed by a medical degree in 1891. His ascent through the echelons of the department, headed by Victor Vaughan, was steady; he became a junior professor in 1893 and then, in 1902, he accepted a position as professor and chairman of a newly founded department of bacteriology, a position he would keep until retiring in 1935 while serving for two years as dean of the medical school.
In 1888, Novy and Vaughan vacationed together at Robert Koch’s Berlin laboratory where they immersed themselves in Koch's novel bacteriological techniques and concepts. In January 1889, less than a year after the trip. Novy and Vaughan developed a laboratory-focused course at Michigan that "may well have been the first systematic laboratory instruction in bacteriology offered at an American medical school." The class was "so successful that it was made a required part of the medical curriculum in 1890."
Novy’s early microbiological studies focused on toxins produced by bacteria. In 1888 he and Vaughan co-authored a book, Ptomaines and Leucomaines, or the Putrefactive and Physiological Alkaloids, which treated the topic in detail. In 1902, the text was substantially revised and reissued under a new title, Cellular Toxins, or the Chemical Factors in the Causation of Disease. Although their position on the nature of causative action changed over the course of these editions, Novy and Vaughn consistently advanced the position that the toxins produced by bacterial pathogens were responsible for symptoms in the the infected organism, a position that was eventually rejected as untenable.
Novy's interest in anaerobic bacteria led him to develop new ways of cultivating these organisms for study. These included the Novy jar, an anaerobic culture method that uses a vacuum pump to remove air from a container; the air is replaced with nitrogen or another inert gas. Novy is also remembered for his discovery and isolation of Clostridium novyi, a species of the bacilli that cause gas gangrene.
Novy is perhaps best known for his long study of trypanosomes and spirochetes. He was among the first, if not the first, to culture a trypanosome in an artificial medium. In addition, in 1906, the organism that causes the American form of relapsing fever, Spirochaeta novyi, was discovered in his laboratory.
Among Novy’s students was the scientist and writer Paul de Kruif, author of the popular history of immunology Microbe Hunters (1926). Some years before, he also served as a technical advisor to Sinclair Lewis as he wrote his bestselling novel Arrowsmith (1925). In Lewis' novel, a character named Max Gottlieb is believed to be a composite of the biologist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) and Novy — about whom de Kruif, as a former student, would certainly have had detailed information.
As a charter member, Novy helped to found the Society of American Bacteriologists in 1899, and he served as its president in 1904. Novy was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and he held honorary degrees from the University of Cincinnati and the University of Michigan.
Novy died on 8 August 1957 in Ann Arbor.
Bibliography
Parascandola, John. "Novy, Frederick George." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 10, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008, pp. 154-155.
Created 8 February 2023
Last modified 21 March 2023