Barnett Rosenberg

Overview
Barnett Rosenberg (1926 - ) is an American chemist best known for the discovery of the anti-cancer drug cisplatin.

Rosenberg obtained his PhD in Physics at New York University (NYU) in 1956. He joined Michigan State University in 1961 and worked there until 1997.

In 1965, Rosenberg and his colleagues proved that certain platinum-containing compounds inhibited cell division and thereby cured solid tumors. The chemotherapy drug that eventually resulted from this work, cisplatin, obtained Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 1978. The initial discovery was quite serendipitous. Rosenberg was looking into the effects of an electric field on the growth of bacteria. He noticed that bacteria ceased to divide when placed in an electric field and eventually pinned down the cause of this phenomenon to the platinum electrode he was using.

Rosenberg was named Michiganian of the Year in 1979.