Abraham Eisenstark (born September 5, 1919, Warsaw, Poland – August 28, 2018) was an American professor of microbiology.
[2] As part of his Ph.D. dissertation, which he completed in 1948, he showed that penicillin worked to stop infection by interfering with the cell wall during bacterial division.
[3] (Note: The tribute to Eisenstark from the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri cited the wrong journal for his work on penicillin.
[4] The paper that appeared in the journal Science in 1947 reported electron micrographs of X-ray treated Escherichia coli.
They include defining the nature of Newcastle virus and the observation of “incomplete” viral particles usable for use in vaccines; development of “recombinationless” strains of Salmonella typhimurium; the discovery that bacteriophage can transfer plasmid genes as well as chromosomal genes; and the establishment of the antigenic and morphological properties of the mutator phage, mu-1, a bacterial virus that has been important for understanding gene transposition and the development of molecular genetics[3]At the University of Missouri, in 1990 he went into mandatory retirement as professor emeritus.