Edmund Carl Kornfeld (24 February 1919 – 22 June 2012) was an American organic chemist who devoted his life to the research of new drugs.

Later that year, they discovered that this microbe produced a unique compound that had the remarkable property of killing all staphylococcal bacteria, including the penicillin-resistant strains.

The purification method employed during that time utilized picric acid - a potentially explosive chemical; because of this, an alternate process was developed.

However, this new method yielded material with a purity of only 82% and, when solubilized, produced a brown liquid aptly termed "Mississippi mud".

[5] Edmund C. Kornfeld, E. J. Fornefeld, G. Bruce Kline, Marjorie J. Mann, Dwight E. Morrison, Reuben G. Jones, R. B. Woodward.