chester county history center
G. Raymond Rettew ’26 (right) pioneered a way to produce penicillin on a mass scale during World War II.
The
Mushroom Man
A modest chemist finds a path to penicillin under wartime pressure
by Jamie Stiehm ’82
But Rettew didn’t do too badly in life after a “fat and fancy-free” boyhood that led to Swarthmore Preparatory School.
The Scottish doctor Alexander Fleming is famed as the genius who discovered antibacterial penicillin in 1928, extracting the compound from mold.
Just a blink in time later across the Atlantic, Rettew was the self-trained expert (with no formal degree) who pioneered a way to produce penicillin on a mass scale in wartime. The United States and the United Kingdom were then embroiled in the fierce fight against Nazi Germany.
The leading practical expert on mushroom spawn, Rettew used his deep well of knowledge to develop a rapid process for mass production of penicillin for the Allied front in Europe.
The first shipment of penicillin was delivered to the U.S. government in the summer of 1943 to apply antibiotics to soldiers and sailors who would have suffered and died of infections — or lost their limbs from gangrene — in previous wars.
And so Rettew, a civilian and self-described “quiet man” accomplished a life-saving feat in the fog and fury of World War II. Penicillin was later launched worldwide.
Rettew conducted his ground-breaking research at Wyeth Laboratories in Chester County. His 1942 technique — or successful discovery — could not have been better timed in the annals of battlefield medicine. The U.S. government ranked ramping up penicillin production as one of its top wartime science projects, after the top-secret Manhattan Project.
The “wonder drug” to treat and heal wounded soldiers was in place to support General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s invasion of Normandy, France, known as D-Day.
That resounding victory on June 6, 1944 opened the way for defeating Nazi Germany.
Thousands of troops survived the onslaught thanks to medical advances in Army hospitals. They came home to Post-war America, blossoming into a prospering and optimistic nation. Many paid their way to college on the GI Bill.
For the critical role he played in America’s transformation during World War II, Rettew did not seek fame. But he took great pride in overseeing the world’s largest source of penicillin culture production during the war.
“This was not a business opportunity for him,” says Conor Hepp, president of the Chester County History Center. “He wanted to dedicate his knowledge to the war effort, to help humanity. That was his passion.”
The History Center recently produced a documentary on Rettew, titled The Mushroom Man Who Changed the World.
Rettew writes in his brief memoir of working urgently with the War Production Board, it was “the American way of solving technical problems in a hurry.”
— Conor Hepp, president of Chester County History Center
“The early days were exciting and we did have fun!” Rettew added.
The chemist also notes that he and Fleming developed a warm friendship after the war. He hosted Fleming on a visit to Wyeth Laboratories in West Chester and at a dinner in his honor in Philadelphia.
They were like-minded men. Fleming declined to patent his discovery of penicillin, determined to keep it available for the common good.
The story of Rettew’s work with penicillin begins with opening the Chester County Mushroom Laboratory as a young man. In the 1930s, Rettew ran that business, cultivating mushroom spawn in its purest form.
His “mushroom man” reputation reached Washington, D.C., in 1942. A government official came to meet Rettew and observe his lab. From their discussion, both came away encouraged that there might be some way to harness his work to the war effort.
Alone in his lab, often at night, Rettew wrote, “I started to develop a method for penicillin recovery from fermentation broth.”
Of all things, he added banana oil to the brew to try to isolate penicillin. That seemed to have some effect.
KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Computer illustration of a penicillium sp. fungus. The antibiotic penicillin is obtained from certain types of penicillium fungi.
The centrifuge extracted penicillin as a sodium salt in water, which was then freeze-dried into powder. Voila!
“That changed everything,” Hepp notes.
The Sharples factory, which separated milk and cream, was close to Rettew’s lab in West Chester.
The Sharples family later gifted the 1964 Dining Hall to the College campus. Rettew’s early experiments and experience with the properties of mushroom spawn led to millions of lives being saved during — and after — World War II.
Though he traveled widely around the world after the war to help set up penicillin plants, Rettew declared, “Nothing pleased me so much” as being named the Chester County Outstanding Citizen of 1951.
While he regretted neglecting German as a senior, Rettew did not try to take the class a third time. His upcoming summer wedding to Helen was his top priority. A young Samuel Osmond Barber II, a noted American composer from West Chester, played the church organ.
The couple had two sons and a daughter. Rettew died in 1973, at age 70, an unsung hero who changed history.
Jamie Stiehm ’82, author of The War Within, is a columnist for Creators Syndicate on national politics and history.