Science & invention
Mildred Rebstock
1919–2011 · pharmaceutical chemist
Parke-Davis research chemist in Detroit who led the first complete synthesis of an antibiotic, chloramphenicol (Chloromycetin), in 1947.
- Born
Elkhart, Indiana- Died
Ann Arbor, Michigan
aged 91- Birth name
- Mildred Catherine Rebstock
- Detroit years
- 1945–2011
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Rebstock was born in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1919, studied at North Central College and earned her doctorate at the University of Illinois in 1945. That year she joined the research laboratories of Parke-Davis, the Detroit drug maker whose riverfront campus housed one of America's first industrial research labs, and she stayed with the company until 1977. After working on dihydrostreptomycin, she was given a new antibiotic, found by John Ehrlich in a soil microbe, to synthesize. Around November 1947 she and her team achieved the first complete chemical synthesis of an antibiotic, chloramphenicol, sold as Chloromycetin; making it in the laboratory proved cheaper than fermentation. Time magazine profiled her in 1949, and in 1950 she was named Science Woman of the Year, receiving the award from President Truman. She became a research leader in 1959 and died in Ann Arbor in 2011.
Highlights
- Led the first complete synthesis of an antibiotic, chloramphenicol, 1947
- Parke-Davis research chemist, 1945–1977; research leader from 1959
- Science Woman of the Year, 1950, presented by President Truman
- Chloramphenicol is on the WHO list of critically important antibiotics
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1945–1950s
Parke-Davis Research Laboratory (Building 55)
Closed · 1902–1979
The 1902 laboratory on the Parke-Davis riverfront campus, a National Historic Landmark as one of the first U.S. industrial pharmaceutical research labs. Parke-Davis sold the complex in 1979; the lab later became the Roberts Riverwalk Hotel, which closed in the early 2020s, and Bedrock bought it in 2022.