The author of this annual report and committee chair is indebted to members of the committee, indicated below, who continue to support the chemical heritage of the ACS New York Section.

 The year 2007 was a particularly active year for the committee, as two historic landmarks were approved.  The IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights New York was designated as a Local Section Landmark, and the Pfizer Pharmaceutical labs in Brooklyn were approved for designation as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.  Both of these distinctions are intended as public outreach efforts in order to convey to the public the wealth of chemistry that was utilized at these two facilities in order to benefit humanity.
 

I.  Designation of IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center

 The major initiative of the committee this year was the Section’s designation of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center as a New York Local Section Historic Chemical Landmark.  The Center was recognized for their innovative work in using chemistry to develop new materials, as described on the inscription of the plaques that was presented by the New York Section to IBM:
 

The plaque was presented by Joan Laredo Liddell, Chair of the New York Section, to John E. Kelly III, IBM Senior Vice President & Director of Research, at the Research Center, on November 29, 2007.  Joan gave an excellent summary of the delelopment of the Center, and the innovative work that has been done there in employing chemistry to develop novel materials, for example the computer memory chip.  Dr. John B. Sharkey, Historian of the Section, gave a brief history of the New York Section, and a summary of the wide range of awards that the Section offers to deserving candidates and institutions.  Dr. Kelly expressed deep appreciation to the Section for this distinction, and promised that the plaque would be prominently displayed at the Center.  He also introduced six IBM Research Fellows who are among the group of scientists that are developing these novel materials.
 
 

II.  Approval of Pfizer’s Brooklyn Lab as a National Historic Chemical Landmark

The NY Section has been involved in several ACS National Historic Chemical Landmarks: the Bakelyzer, Havemeyer Hall, Nucleic Acid and Protein Chemistry at the Rockefeller University, John Draper and the Founding of the ACS, and the Polymer Research Institute.  The New York Section is pleased that its nomination of the Pfizer Lab in Brooklyn New York has been approved for landmark designation in 2008.

The approved designation focuses on the  development of deep-tank fermentation that was developed by Pfizer in the 1930s and how the techniques was used to mass-produce such important chemicals and drugs such as penicillin, which was of such great importance in saving lives during and after World War II.  What follows is a brief timeline of some of the highlights of the work that has been done at the Brooklyn facility of Pfizer.

From its beginnings in 1849 in a small, red brick building in Brooklyn, Charles Pfizer and Co. grew into the largest pharmaceutical company in the world.  For nearly 160 years Pfizer’s Brooklyn plant produced chemicals and medicines for the U.S. and people around the world.

Many of Pfizer’s most important innovations took place in Brooklyn.  In the 1940s with the world at war, Pfizer took an enormous chance, risking its resources in an effort to mass-produce an incredible new wonder drug: penicillin.  Due to the Brooklyn plant’s breakthroughs in deep-tank fermentation, the company succeeded:  penicillin saved thousands of lives, ushered in the Age of Antibiotics, and transformed Pfizer from a chemical company to a healthcare leader.
 

History and Timeline

1849
In 1849, in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart established a small chemical firm, Charles Pfizer & Co.. The two young cousins came from Germany to seek opportunities in America.  Their first product augured the problem-solving approach that became Pfizer’s hallmark: Intestinal worms were a common affliction in mid-19th century America.  The treatment available at the time ? santonin, an antiparasitic ? was so bitter than many people refused to take it.  Combining their skills and applying a dose of creativity, Pfizer, a chemist, and Erhart, a confectioner, found the solution: by blending santonin with almond-toffee flavoring and shaping it into a candy cone, they made a palatable form that people would accept.  It was an immediate success.

1850s-1870s
With the success of santonin, Pfizer and Erhart began to look for other opportunities.  From the vantage point of that tiny building in Brooklyn ? their lab, office and warehouse? they foresaw that America’s population explosion and westward expansion would necessitate products for industrial growth, but many essential chemicals and medicinal products were not readily available in the United States and were being imported.  They launched the business to make these “fine chemicals” ? specialty products in small quantities.  And in order to compete with the high-quality products coming from Europe, they made an explicit commitment to “quality;” with exacting standards.  Charles Pfizer and Co. began to produce other products, its reputation for quality grew, and they gained a foothold.

Among their products were borax and boric acid. Initially made from crude borate of lime mined in Italy, borax was and still is a laundry additive. Boric acid was used as a topical antiseptic. Both were also used as food preservatives.  The company also made cream of tartar, tartaric acid and Rochelle salts.  These useful chemicals were made from by-products of the European wine industry. Cream of tartar (for baking powder) was a rising agent that worked more quickly than yeast and slowed the spoilage of baked goods; Tartaric acid was used in foods, beverages and medicines; Rochelle salts had laxative and diuretic properties and were also used in metal-plating and mirror-making.

Demand for painkillers, preservatives, and disinfectants soared during the Civil War, and America’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry grew to meet the needs.  Pfizer began production of many products with medicinal applications in order to treat the sick and wounded: iodine, morphine, chloroform, mercurials and camphor.

1880s-1890s
In 1880 the company added citric acid to its product line.  They did not know how important that decision was.  Decades later, citric acid would prove to be the pivotal product for growth and, ultimately, Pfizer’s breakthrough in penicillin and successes as a modern pharmaceutical company.

A statement made by Charles Pfizer in 1899, at the company's 50th anniversary celebration, revealed where the company stood as it moved into the 20th century and into an increasingly competitive marketplace: He addressed the celebrants: "Our goal has been and continues to be the same: to find a way to produce the highest-quality products and to perfect the most efficient way to accomplish this, in order to serve our customers. This company has built itself on its reputation and its dedication to these standards, and if we are to celebrate another 50 years, we must always be aware that quality is the keystone."  He retired a year later, but “Pfizer Quality” was to become a catch phrase in the industry.

The 20th Century

The turn of the century was a watershed year for the company.  Having started with one product half a century earlier, Charles Pfizer and Co. was now a leader of the American chemical businesses.  But Charles Erhart had died early in the early 1890s, and Charles Pfizer was now nearing eighty.  He saw the need to secure the firm’s future.  He incorporated the company, and he began to entrust the company to new management, including both family members and non-family members.  Charles Pfizer died in 1906. The first new President was Charles Pfizer, Jr., and then Emile Pfizer ? the youngest of Charles Pfizer’s three sons ? took over.

The Era of Citric Acid

Although Pfizer began producing citric acid in 1880, and demand was increasing for both industrial purposes and America’s new “soft drinks” such as Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper, it was still a relatively minor product.  Citric acid was made in small batches from lemons and limes, which were mixed with calcium oxide (quicklime) to make calcium citrate.  In Brooklyn, the ingredients were processed to produce citric acid crystals.   Pfizer imported the raw material from California, Florida, Italy and the West Indies.

By 1913 the company was producing seventy thousand pounds of citric acid a month.  But availability of sufficient citrus was erratic Pfizer was at the mercy of its suppliers and the weather. West Indies and Italy.  The company began looking for ways to make citric acid without imported citrus fruit products.

With the start of World War I, the cost of raw materials rose. Deliveries from Europe were cut. Supplying medicines and chemicals for the war helped the company survive, but overall sales declined. Now, more than ever, Pfizer needed to find other ways to produce citric acid.  Dr. James Currie, a brilliant food chemist, was hired to tackle the challenge. Currie had a daring idea: to produce citric acid without using citrus.

In 1919, Currie and his 16-year-old assistant, Jasper Kane, began working on a new process known as SUCIAC (Sugar Under Conversion Into Acid Citric).The goal was to use fermentation to convert sugar to produce citric acid. Everyone involved with the project was sworn to secrecy. If successful, Pfizer would be free from the grip of its suppliers.

1920s
SUCIAC was promising, but initial output was low and costs were high.  This was also a period of great financial strain.  After the end of World War I, a recession hit.  By 1920 sales had decreased by 6%, and by 1921 they dropped 52% lower.  The company suspended the production of several products, but even in this difficult time they continued to back Currie and Kane.  Pfizer’s management saw the potential for SUCIAC to transform not just Pfizer, but the entire face of the citric acid industry.

It took them years to improve the fermentation process, but yields began to rise, and in 1924 they had seen sufficient success to build a SUCIAC building at the Brooklyn site.  It was a huge risk, since it required them to shift resources away from other products, such as borax, that had been important for decades.  By 1926, Pfizer outdistanced the companies that relied on lemons and limes, and they soon dominated the citric acid market.

SUCIAC was proving to be a great success, but there were still limitations.  Making huge quantities in shallow pans was impossible.   Jasper Kane and his colleague, Alexander Finlay, tried the SUCIAC process in huge, deep tanks filled with mold and sugar-water.  But they couldn’t get in enough air for the mold to survive.  Finally, they invented a method to bubble air into the mixture and keep the fluid moving with an electric stirrer.  It worked.  In 1929, Pfizer produced almost six million pounds of citric acid ? without a drop of citrus.

1930s
In 1933, Kane and Finlay made another fundamental change: they began to use molasses rather than refined sugar as raw material.  This was the process that would ultimately unlock the secret for large-scale production of penicillin.

Across the Atlantic, another profound event occurred:  In 1928, Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming was working in his laboratory in England.  He was growing bacteria in Petrie dishes.  The legend is that Dr. Fleming left some of the Petrie dishes on the windowsill, and when he came back to the lab he discovered that the bacteria had become contaminated by molds in the air.  He saw that something important was happening: a yellow liquid from one of the molds was killing the bacteria.   He determined that the mold was a common black mold called penicillium notatum.  Dr. Fleming called the yellow liquid penicillin.  Experiments with penicillin proved it could kill disease-causing germs. But the yellow liquid was so unpredictable and difficult to purify that Fleming gave up his study of it.

In the late 1930s, two scientists at Oxford University in England, Howard Florey and Ernest Chain, came across Fleming’s work, and took it a step further. They discovered a way to grow enough penicillin to help a gravely ill man live longer.  Still, it was not tenable as a medicine, since it was unstable.

When World War II began in 1939, the medical community sought ways to fight the deadly bacterial infections caused by battlefield injuries. As with World War I and the Civil War, more soldiers died from infections than from direct battle.

1940s
In the UK, researchers sought ways to take Florey and Chain’s work to make penicillin for the war.  But they couldn’t grow enough to help the thousands of soldiers who needed it.  England was too war-torn to manufacture penicillin, so the government turned to American industry for help.

In 1941 Pfizer was among four companies that responded to the U.S. government’s challenge to see which company could mass-produce the world’s first “wonder drug.”

Jasper Kane seized the challenge.  Pfizer began making small batches for testing at Columbia University in Manhattan.  The penicillin was so delicate that it would often die during the cab ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan.  The team saw progress, and in 1942 Kane proposed producing penicillin using the deep-tank method Pfizer had perfected with citric acid.  It was a risky idea. To utilize the deep tanks, Pfizer would have to stop production of profitable products and switch to making penicillin.  They had taken a similar gamble over a decade earlier to invest in SUCIAC.  Pfizer’s senior management voted to invest millions of dollars in a still unproven process.

On September 20, 1942, Pfizer purchased the old Rubel Ice Plant on Marcy Avenue, a few blocks from Pfizer’s original plant. They immediately began rebuilding it as the world’s first penicillin factory.  Because of the war, it was almost impossible to get the supplies needed for construction. Workers labored around the clock to complete the plant and refine the tricky production process.

“The faster this building is completed… the quicker our wounded men get penicillin, the new life-saving drug.”
- Sign posted by John L. Smith at the Brooklyn plant

On March 1, 1943, Pfizer made history, opening the world’s first penicillin plant.

Two years later, Pfizer became the world’s largest supplier of penicillin and helped save millions of lives.  This was the penicillin that went to the battlefields.  Approximately 90% of the penicillin that went ashore with Allied forces on D-Day was made at Pfizer’s Brooklyn plant.

Post-WW II
After the War, Pfizer continued to improve penicillin production.  Since Alexander Fleming’s initial findings, penicillin had been a yellow color. However, in 1946 scientists discovered that the color was caused by impurities. Pfizer developed a crystallization method to remove the yellow. The outcome: pure white penicillin that was stable at room temperature and kept its potency for years.

Many other companies began manufacturing their own penicillin using the techniques Pfizer had pioneered.  With increased production capabilities and increased competition, prices plummeted.  From Pfizer had to look for other opportunities.  They realized the importance of antibiotics to the pharmaceutical industry and set out to discover its own antibiotics, beginning its first intensive research and development initiative.

As scientists began to look for new antibiotics, they looked for other sources.  They knew that disease germs did not survive in the ground.  Determined to find the next miracle medicine Pfizer launched a worldwide soil collection and testing program.

They collected over 135,000 soil samples from around the world, and brought them back to the labs in Brooklyn.  Each sample was suspended in water and then incubated on a culture plate. Mold colonies were then tested against harmful bacteria. If the mold killed the bacteria, the researchers would isolate it and test it further.

“We got soil samples from cemeteries, we had balloons sent up in the air collecting soil samples that were wind blown, we got soil samples from the bottom of mine shafts, we got soil from the bottom of the ocean. We got soil from the desert; we got it from the tops of mountains, and the bottoms of mountains and in between.”
- Dr. Ben Sobin, Pfizer Research Scientist

In 1949, Pfizer hit “pay dirt.” A micro-organism in soil from America’s Midwest proved effective against a wide range of deadly bacteria. Terramycin, derived from the Latin for “earth fungus,” was the first antibiotic developed exclusively by Pfizer scientists.

1950s
Terramycin also marked a radical change in the company’s business strategy.  For 100 years, Pfizer had sold its products to other manufacturers who would then make and sell the final product.  Terramycin was such a breakthrough that Pfizer decided to create its own business in order to sell directly to hospitals, physicians and pharmacies.  It was the first pharmaceutical sold in the United States under the Pfizer label.   By 1953, Pfizer had hired 1,300 “detail men,” the term for sales representatives, to promote the company’s new medicines.

The launch of Terramycin also led to expansion in Mexico, Canada, then soon South America, Europe and eventually the Middle East, the Far East and Africa.  Pfizer built a worldwide network of manufacturing plants.

Respectfully submitted,

Dr. John Sharkey
Committee Chair