There is this ongoing argument about who has the edge: the “thinkers” or the “feelers.” All too often, feelings are discarded as substandard to logic and reason. Yet it is a feeling —— passion —— that drives humanity’s journey into the new and unknown. Zeal, another feeling, motivates people to experiment tirelessly until they find what they are looking for. That heart and head come together in extraordinary ways in remarkable people, for the good of many, is strikingly evident in the life of Dr. Florence Seibert.

Florence Barbara Seibert was born in Easton, Pennsylvania on October 6, 1897. In 1900 when polio began to pop up in localized epidemics, she contracted the disease. Perhaps it was this experience, or her teen hobby of reading biographies of famous scientists, that launched Seibert into her place among women of science.

Her parents would not allow limitations resulting from polio to minimize her gifts. With their encouragement, after graduating from high school Florence went to Goucher College in Baltimore on a scholarship and studied chemistry and zoology. After graduation she worked under one of her chemistry teachers at a chemistry laboratory. When the call went out for women to fill positions left vacant by men fighting World War I, she and her professor coauthored several scientific papers on the chemistry of cellulose, a complex carbohydrate that forms the main constituent of the cell wall in most plants, and is now important in the manufacture of numerous products, such as paper, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and explosives.

At this point in her life, Seibert wanted to pursue a career in medicine but was advised against it because of her physical disabilities, so she entered the field of biochemisty instead. She won a scholarship to Yale to pursue her Ph.D. During her studies there she became curious about why many people became developed “protein fevers” after intravenous injections of protein solutions mixed with distilled water. Seibert set out to determine which proteins caused the fevers and why. Her research revealed that the problem was not in the proteins, but in the distilled water contaminated with bacteria. Her tenacity drove her to work beyond this discovery; she invented a distilling apparatus that prevented bacterial contamination. Thanks to Dr. Seibert, intravenous treatment became safe. She earned her Ph.D. in 1923.

She wasn’t finished making major contributions to the medical community. Still passionate about her chosen field, Dr. Seibert moved to Chicago where she began working with Dr. Esmond R. Long a partnership that would span thirty-one years.

Dr. Seibert found another lifelong supporter in her younger sister Mabel. From 1927 onward, with the exception of a single year that Florence spent in Sweden, Mabel lived with her, providing help in both the research institutes and at home.

The year spent in Sweden proved to be a noteworthy one. While working at Uppsala University on a Guggenheim Fellowship, Dr. Seibert isolated the active substance in tuberculin. With this discovery she was able to advance the work of German bacteriologist Robert Koch, who in 1882 had discovered that the tubercle bacillus was the primary cause of tuberculosis. He also learned that if the liquid on which the bacilli grew was injected under the skin, a reaction would occur if people had already been infected with the disease. He believed the active substance in that liquid was protein, but was not able to prove it.

Dr. Seibert proved Dr. Koch’s hypothesis was correct. Afterward, she began trying to isolate the active protein and purify it to use as an accurate pre-symptomatic diagnostic tool. This was not an easy task; proteins are complex and difficult to purify. Seibert succeeded by means of crystallization, but the tiny amounts of crystal that she obtained made it impractical for widespread testing. Again, Seibert persisted, changing the focus of her research to work with larger amounts of active protein that were less pure. She was able to produce a powder in sufficient quantities for widespread use. Further work led to the creation of PPD —— Purified Protein Derivative.

New techniques for the separation and identification of proteins in solution that Dr. Seibert learned in Sweden came home with her to the U.S. She continued her tuberculosis research at the Henry Phipps Institute in Philadelphia where she worked with Dr. Long. Dr. Seibert began work on a large batch of PPD to serve as a basis for a standard dosage. With a uniform dosage, the degree of sensitivity after the test was administered would be based upon the reaction of individuals rather than differences in the PPD injected under the skin. In 1941 the PPD-S (the S marking the PPD as “standard”) became the U.S. government standard for purified tuberculins. Eventually it was adopted as the worldwide standard. It is still used today.

Florence Seibert retired from the Henry Phipps Institute in 1959. She and Mabel moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where Dr. Seibert spent the next 13 years of her retirement studying bacteria associated with various types of cancers. Two years of deteriorating health, attributed to complications from the childhood case of polio, led to her death in 1991.

Dr. Seibert’s passionate tenacity —— along with her logic and reason skills and creativity that let her think beyond the probable or obvious —— earned her the Trudeau Medal from the National Tuberculosis Association in 1938 and the Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1942. In 1944 she was awarded a National Achievement Award for her work by Mrs. Eleanor D. Roosevelt, who ironically died 17 years later from complications stemming from TB. Dr. Florence B. Seibert was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1990.

Bibliography

Author Unknown. Answers.com Biography. Retrieved September 6, 2007

Author Unknown. Free Health Encyclopedia. Florence Seibert Biography (1898-1991). Retrieved September 6, 2007

Author Unknown. National Women’s Hall of Fame. Women of the Hall: Florence Seibert. Retrieved September 6, 2007

Author Unknown. Journal of Chemical Education: Biographical Snapshots of Famous Women and Minority Chemists: Florence B. Seibert. Retrieved September 6, 2007

Author Unknown. Center for Disease Control, Office of Women’s Health. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) Retrieved September 27, 2007

Hollingshead, Ariel. Florence Barbara Siebert (1897-1991). In Women in Chemistry and Physics, A Biobibliographic Sourcebook; Grinstein, Louise S., Rose, Rose K., and Rafailovich, Miriam H., Eds.; Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1993.

Seibert, Florence B. Pebbles on the Hill of a Scientist. St. Petersburg Press: St. Petersburg, Florida, 1968.

Shearer, Benjamin F. and Shearer, Barbara S., Eds.; Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary; Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1997.