Abigail A. Salyers

Abigail A. Salyers (1942 – 2013) was a microbiologist who pioneered the field of human microbiome research. Her work on the bacterial phylum Bacteroidetes and its ecology led to a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. At a time when the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity. She was one of the first to conceptualize the human body as a microbial ecosystem. Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.

Education Abigail Salyers was born in Louisville, Kentucky and attended high school in Arlington, Virginia at Wakefield High School. During high school, she was at risk of expulsion due to being pregnant, but she graduated in 1959 and with the help of her English teacher, Mrs. Baker, applied to college. Salyers went on to receive her undergraduate degree in Mathematics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1969 from George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

In 2001, Salyers was named President of the 40,000 member American Society for Microbiology. Her tenure overlapped with the 2001 anthrax attacks when she advised the US Postal service about the safety precautions. She learned that providing basic information to the postal workers about the bacterium made it possible to have discussions about sophisticated topics in microbiology in a simple way, and that having that information made them feel less frightened. She was also one of the first to recognize the public health risks of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and to convey the growing issue to the public. This included co-authoring Revenge of the Microbes: How Bacterial Resistance is Undermining the Antibiotic Miracle (again with Dixie Whitt), which summarized the latest information on bacterial pathogenesis and antibiotic resistance for a broad audience.

In 2014 after her death, the Salyers Symposium was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to commemorate her life and work. She was cited as the inspiration for the book Women in Microbiology.

Awards for research and teaching 2009 National Graduate Teacher Award in Microbiology. Honorary Doctorate from ETH University in Zurich, Switzerland in 2001. The University of Chicago Marine Biological Laboratory holds the Abigail Salyers Endowed Lecture in Microbial Diversity.

Selected publications