Florence Barbara Seibert (1897-1991) was an American biochemist who invented the first reliable tuberculosis test and helped improve the safety of intravenous injections.

Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, Seibert contracted polio at an early age. As a result, she would suffer from a lifelong limp. Spurred by her interest in science, she was awarded a scholarship to Goucher College, where she earned a degree in chemistry in 1918.

After briefly working as a chemist at a paper mill, she went on to study for a doctorate at Yale University. As part of her graduate work, under Lafayette B. Mendel, she discovered which proteins caused fevers after patients had been injected with protein solutions containing distilled water. She then invented a distilling apparatus that prevented bacterial contamination. She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1923.

From 1924 to 1928, Seibert, as a Porter Fellow at the University of Chicago, served as a pathology instructor and continued her research in pyrogenic distilled water. During this time she met Esmond R. Long, who was working on tuberculosis. In 1932, she relocated with Long to the Henry Phipps Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, as an assistant professor in biochemistry. With funding from the National Tuberculosis Association, the two worked for thirty-one years, collaborating and developing methods for separating and purifying the protein from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, obtaining purified protein derivative (PPD) thus enabling the creation of a reliable test for the disease. She published her first work on purification of tuberculin in 1934.

From 1937-1938, while working with Theodor Svedberg at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, she developed methods for purifying a crystalline tuberculin derivative, therefore, successfully isolating the tuberculosis protein molecule. By 1940, Seibert had improved her protein purification procedure sufficiently for it to become the international standard for use in tuberculin tests. For this work, she received the Trudeau Medal from the National Tuberculosis Association in 1938, the Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1941, and the first Achievement Award from the Association of University Women in 1943. Other awards she received, during this time, include the National Achievement Award of 1944 and the Gimbel Award of 1946. Upon her retirement from the Phipps Institute in 1959, she moved, with her sister Molly, to St. Petersburg, Florida. She continued her research of the relationship between bacteria and types of cancer at the Mound Park Hospital and the Bay Pines V.A. Research Center. She continued to publish scientific papers until 1977. She died in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1991.

The papers of Florence Barbara Seibert -- correspondence, reports, and manuscripts -- afford an opportunity to learn a great deal about Seibert's work on the tubercle bacillus at the Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania (1932-1959). Her fundamental studies, which combined theories and techniques of protein chemistry, microbiology, and immunology established an international standard for diagnosis of tuberculosis and led to methods for a safe use of intravenous medication and blood transfusions. The collection also contains material on Seibert's later interest in cancer research at the Veterans' Administration Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. Taken together, these two research programs document interesting aspects of basic biochemical research within a medical context. Because of its clinical relevance, Seibert's research on the tubercle bacillus was of immense interest to pharmaceutical houses. Her papers are therefore a valuable source on the cooperation between academic biochemists and the drug industries. The Seibert Papers are also an important source on the history of women in science. A graduate of Goucher College (1918), Seibert received her doctorate from Yale in 1923 under Lafayette B. Mendel. She then joined H. G. Wells at the biochemistry department at the University of Chicago, where she worked until her move to the Phipps Institute in 1932. A recipient of several prestigious awards and fellowships, Seibert has been rather atypical as a woman scientist of the 1920s and 1930s in terms of recognition (though she did not attain full professorship until 1955, long after her accomplishments had established her as a leading expert in her held). A highly productive scientist, she was well connected within the international community of biochemists. She was also committed to the cause of women in science and communicated with other women working in the life sciences. The five series reflect her secure place in the main-stream of biochemistry, as well as her special position as a woman in science.

The papers, 12 boxes, 6 linear feet, are divided into five series: Series I. Correspondence, 1922-1977, 8 boxes, 4 linear feet; Series II. Organizations, Foundations, Conferences, 1923-1977, 1 box, 0.5 linear feet; Series III. Universities, Hospitals, Institutions, 1914-1976, 1 box, 0.5 linear feet; Series IV. Works by Seibert, 1922-1976, 1 box, 0.5 linear feet; Series V. Works by Others, 1934-1973, 1 box, 0.5 linear feet

Provenance

Presented by Florence Barbara Seibert, 1976, 1977; accessioned 01/05/1976 (1976 387ms). See in-house shelf list for additional accession numbers and dates.

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

When Theodor Svedberg became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Uppsala in 1912, colloid chemistry was a major new research area in the life sciences. Based on the premise that a colloidal or aggregate state was a fundamental property of living matter, especially of protoplasm, chemists, among them Svedberg, focused on physicochemical studies of bio-colloids.

The goal of analyzing the aggregate properties of colloids was partly responsible for Svedberg's design of the analytical ultracentrifuge, an enormous machine that separated colloidal solutions into components based on a differential rate of sedimentation in a force field. The ultracentrifuge, designed in the 1920s in collaboration with John W. Williams of the University of Wisconsin, was crucial in demonstrating the macromolecular theory and became a powerful sorting and weighing device in molecular research. In 1926 Svedberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Until the late 1930s Svedberg's laboratory was the only place for studies requiring ultracentrifugation; it became an international center for a wide range of researches from physical chemistry to medicine. The Seibert Papers contain material on Svedberg and his laboratory, documenting the connection between Seibert's biomedical research and Svedberg's laboratory. Seibert's correspondence with the Guggenheim Foundation contains material relating to her fellowship in Uppsala.

Arne Tiselius was the protege of Theodor Svedberg at the University of Uppsala. His dissertation on the electrophoresis of colloidal proteins (1930) was an outgrowth of Svedberg's ultracentrifuge studies. It was well known since the 1900s that proteins carried different electric charges and could therefore be separated out of mixtures by applying an electromotive force. Several biochemists before Tiselius, including Karl Landsteiner, John H. Northrop, and Leonor Michaelis, had attempted to build electrophoresis apparatus, but were hindered by technical difficulties. In 1937, partly through collaborations with these men, Tiselius substantially improved on the original design, building a sensitive and reliable apparatus which quickly became indispensable to biochemical research. As a result, Tiselius' laboratory in Uppsala became in the late 1930s a world center for research and training in the intricate techniques of electrophoresis. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1948.

John W. Williams' most important contribution to chemistry lay in his design and construction of laboratory apparatus. The theoretical and experimental research on the ultracentrifuge and electrophoresis facilitated major advances in almost every field in the life sciences, especially in biochemistry, immunology, and molecular biology. Beginning around 1922 at the University of Wisconsin, Williams collaborated with the Swedish chemist Theodor Svedberg (during Svedberg's visit to Wisconsin as a Rockefeller Fellow) on the first prototype of the ultracentrifuge. The mathematical theories behind the apparatus were worked out by the physicist Warren Weaver, who left Wisconsin to become the director of the Rockefeller Foundation's division of natural sciences. Williams' ultracentrifuge projects received sizable grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, and his laboratory was the first academic center in America to house an ultracentrifuge (1937), thus becoming an important research and training center in the life sciences.

• Goucher College.
• Lilly Research Laboratories.
• Merck Sharp & Dohme.
• Mound Park Hospital Foundation.
• Parke, Davis & Company.
• University of Chicago
• University of Pennsylvania.
• Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.
• Yale University.

• Affronti, Lewis Francis, 1928-2007
• Anderson, Rudolph J. (Rudolph John), 1879-1961
• Baldwin, R. W. (Robert William), 1927-2012
• Cohn, Edwin Joseph, 1892-1953
• Diller, Irene Corey
• Dunbar, Frank P.
• Eagle, Harry
• Heidelberger, Michael, 1888-1991
• Horsfall, Frank Lappin, 1906-1971
• Landsteiner, Karl, 1868-1943
• Long, Esmond R. (Esmond Ray)
• Mendel, Lafayette B. (Lafayette Benedict), 1872-1935
• Opie, Eugene L. (Eugene Lindsay), 1873-1971
• Palmer, Carroll Edwards, 1903-1972
• Pedersen, Kai Oluf
• Sabin, Florence Rena, 1871-1953
• Seibert, Florence Barbara,1897-1991
• Sumner, James B. (James Batcheller), 1887-1955
• Svedberg, Theodor
• Tiselius, Arne
• Watson, Dennis Wallace
• Wells, Harry Gideon, 1875-1943
• Williams, John Warren, 1898-1988
• Winzler, Richard J., 1914-1972

• Biochemistry.
• Immunology
• Medical sciences.
• Pyrogens.
• Tuberculosis.
• Women scientists.