Jasper Herbert Kane

By Kenneth Sun

The focus of this investigation is on one of the Giants of Poly, Jasper Kane. I chose to present Jasper Kane to highlight his monumental historical contributions to the field of medicine. Jasper Kane’s journey reflects the broader impact of Polytechnic University alumni on society through scientific innovation. This investigation seeks to answer the question: How did Jasper Kane’s development and implementation of deep-tank fermentation transform penicillin from a laboratory discovery into a mass-produced medicine and, in the process, transform the pharmaceutical industry? More importantly, this investigation seeks to demonstrate that industrial engineering innovations, not just scientific discovery, were the decisive factors in transforming penicillin into a global medicine. This investigation argues that the decisive turning point in penicillin’s history was not its initial discovery but the development of industrial-scale production methods, demonstrating that engineering innovation played a more critical role than laboratory science in transforming penicillin into a globally accessible medicine.

Made in Brooklyn

Who Was Jasper Kane?

The booklet “Giants of Poly: Jasper H. Kane: A Legacy of Dazzling Discoveries” is a selection from the Poly Archives. It is a chronological account of Jasper Kane’s life, career milestones at Pfizer, and significant contributions to medical science and society. As an institutional publication from the Poly Archives, it also reflects how Kane’s work has been interpreted and remembered at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

According to Giants of Poly: Jasper H. Kane: A Legacy of Dazzling Discoveries, Jasper Herbert Kane was born on July 15, 1903. His father, Jasper Thomas Kane, a second-generation Irish-American, married Loretta Sulpice O’Reilly, a first-generation Irish-American. The couple’s first child, Jasper, “was born in Brooklyn–as were all the rest: a girl, who died just a week after birth, then five more boys–Charles, Harold, Arthur, Robert, and Edward–then twins Evelyn and Herbert.” Jasper Kane, a Brooklynite, “obtained his primary and secondary education at Our Lady of Good Counsel parochial school and Manual Training High School” (“Pharmacy Unit Is 25 Years Old”). “Jasper and four of his brothers would attend Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now Polytechnic University)” (“Jasper H. Kane: A Legacy of Dazzling Discoveries”). Jasper and Harold studied chemistry, while Charles, Arthur and Robert pursued their father’s field of structural engineering.

As one of the favorite sons of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Jasper Kane, a chemistry major, attended evening classes there from 1918 to 1928, graduating in 1928. Kane also received an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Polytechnic University in 1995 (Rodengen, 2005). He also received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the College of Pharmacy at St. John’s University, recognizing his contributions to medicine, particularly in discovering and developing the broad-spectrum antibiotics (“Pharmacy Unit Is 25 Years Old”).

While attending the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and working for Pfizer, Kane recruited friends to work at Pfizer, including John McKeen from the Class of 1926. McKeen stayed at Pfizer and eventually became the company’s president in 1949. “Indeed, if influence on a single company and industry is any gauge, Kane and McKeen could very well be Polytechnic’s most important alumni tag-team” (“Jasper H. Kane: A Legacy of Dazzling Discoveries”).

During a commencement speech in May 2004, Henry A. McKinnell Jr., chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Pfizer Inc., said, “The genius of Jasper Kane and John McKeen soon made Pfizer the world’s largest producer of penicillin. Did that achievement turn the tide of the Second World War? No… brave men and women did that. But cheap and readily available penicillin did save hundreds of thousands of lives during the war… and tens of millions of lives after it” (McKinnell, 2004).

As a teenager, Jasper Kane worked on SUCIAC (Sugar Under Conversion Into Acid Citric), a project that revolutionized the citric acid industry. Later, he made his first company-transforming discoveries by developing a method to substitute molasses, a cheap by-product of sugar refining, for more expensive white sugar in citric acid production. He employed submerged fermentation methods, using large, deep tanks rather than shallow trays, allowing microorganisms to grow throughout the liquid medium rather than only on the surface. This approach saved millions of dollars in raw material and production costs and freed Pfizer from dependence on European citrus growers (Pfizer; “Jasper H. Kane: A Legacy of Dazzling Discoveries”). Building on his success in citric acid production, Kane applied fermentation methods to produce riboflavin (vitamin B2) for use in flour (Pfizer). The new process for producing vitamins demonstrated the growing significance of industrial fermentation and contributed to 40% of Pfizer’s earnings (“Jasper H. Kane: A Legacy of Dazzling Discoveries”; Roueché, 1951).

Kane’s submerged deep-tank fermentation methods enabled the mass production of penicillin during World War II and transformed penicillin from a laboratory discovery into a widely available, life-saving drug. Microbiologist Gladys L. Hobby compared the mass production of the penicillin program to the Manhattan Project to emphasize the profound effect of penicillin on our modern society in saving tens of millions of lives (Conniff, 2017). This comparison demonstrates the significant impact of deep-tank fermentation methods on World War II and society.

Kane's contributions to medicine were broad-based, beyond penicillin. For example, after the war, as Director of Biochemical Research at Pfizer Inc., Kane led the team that discovered and produced Terramycin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic effective against over 100 infectious organisms (“Zoetis History”, 2015).

The above historical pictures from Pfizer Inc. demonstrate the progression in which the same fermentation principles underpinned both industrial chemicals and life-saving medicines, reinforcing the claim that the breakthrough in penicillin was rooted in engineering continuity rather than a single moment of scientific discovery. They also support the argument that large-scale industrial coordination and engineering innovation were as critical to World War II as scientific discovery itself.

Penicillin was discovered in September 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish/British scientist who was a professor of bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. On September 3, 1928, Fleming began sorting his Petri dishes containing Staphylococcus bacteria after returning from his approximately three-week-long vacation. He noticed that in one of his Petri dishes, dotted with Staphylococcus colonies, the bacteria had died around an area where mold was growing (“Discovery and Development of Penicillin”). The environment that produced the effect that Alexander Fleming saw was extremely difficult to reproduce because molds and bacteria each require different temperatures to grow. According to the NOVA documentary, The Rise of a Wonder Drug: How Penicillin Changed the World, Fleming usually grew bacteria on plates and put the plates in an incubator to allow the bacteria to form colonies. While he was away on vacation, some of his Petri dishes were left outside, allowing the English summer weather to create the conditions necessary for the discovery. The documentary explains, “First, an unusual cold spell allowed the mold to flourish. Then, the temperature rose and the bacteria started growing. Beneath the lid of an abandoned laboratory plate, the mold started killing off the young bacteria.” The discovery of penicillin is an example of how chance plays an important role in scientific discovery. Staphylococci, a human pathogen, grow most rapidly at the human body temperature of 98.6 °F. The lowest temperature at which they can grow is around 53 °F. The Penicillium mold prefers to grow around 77 °F (Blake, 2025).

Fleming found that penicillin could kill a wide range of bacteria. He later identified it as Penicillium notatum, a rare strain of mold that produces penicillin, a substance that inhibits bacterial growth. He attempted to isolate pure penicillin from mold culture, which proved to be difficult. He published his paper in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in June 1929. The discovery was largely forgotten at the time (“Discovery and Development of Penicillin”).

It was not until 1939 that Alexander Fleming’s discovery was transformed from a laboratory curiosity into a life-saving drug when three Oxford researchers (Howard Florey, Ernst Boris Chain, and Norman Heatley) chose, somewhat by chance, to investigate it further among many possible research topics. These scientists began their work on the purification of penicillin during World War II, which made research conditions especially difficult. The team first carried out animal experiments in which they needed to process up to 500 liters of mold filtrate per week. They used many different culture vessels such as bedpans, baths, milk bottles, and food tins. The team later developed a customized fermentation vessel based on bedpans to save space and simplify the process of removing the broth. From the filtrate, penicillin was extracted, purified, and concentrated prior to clinical trials. The scientists discovered that the key to extracting penicillin was controlling the pH, reducing the temperature, and repeatedly evaporating the product. The Oxford laboratory was effectively turned into a penicillin factory during that time (“Discovery and Development of Penicillin”).

In 1941, purified penicillin remained extremely scarce due to a combination of biological, chemical, and engineering challenges. “The Penicillium mold only grew in a film, a few millimeters thick, on the surface of a growth medium, and Oxford biochemist Norman Heatley constantly struggled to eke out enough of the stuff even for experimental purposes. His manufacturing lab comprised cookie tins, pie tins, milk bottles, trays, plates, and bedpans” (Conniff, 2017). The original strains of Penicillium mold produced only very low yields of antibiotics. In addition, penicillin is highly unstable and easily contaminated, and the molecule can degrade during extraction and purification from the broth. The production process was also time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring careful control of environmental conditions, including sterile conditions, adequate aeration, careful temperature regulation, and the use of anti-foaming techniques to maintain optimal mold growth. Researchers at the University of Oxford could only produce penicillin in an array of small vessels, which severely restricted its availability. By early 1941, only enough penicillin for six patients had been produced by surface culture (Short, 2021).

The deep-tank fermentation process pioneered by Jasper Kane played an important role in the mass production of penicillin in World War II. Developed to increase yields for citric acid and vitamin production, deep-tank fermentation methods became an ideal and practical method to mass-produce penicillin.

Despite his major contributions to the mass production of penicillin, none of Jasper Kane’s patents directly involved penicillin production. However, he filed many patents on the deep-tank fermentation process, a process that was crucial for penicillin production during World War II. Kane’s patents included ones on fermentation processes that helped develop deep-tank methods for citric acid and were later applied to penicillin production (Patent 2,327,191 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US2327191A, Patent 2,385,283 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US2385283A, and Patent 1,893,819 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US1893819A) and patents related to Terramycin and its applications (Patent 2,516,080 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US2516080A, Patent 2,963,401 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US2963401A, and Patent 2,813,820 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US2813820A).

These patents are often grouped together under deep-tank fermentation, but each of them solves a different problem and requires a distinct process or engineering refinement. In each case, Kane and his collaborators addressed new technical challenges, such as chemical control, oxygen utilization, mold selection, and product extraction. This series of patents demonstrates the evolution of fermentation through multiple innovations.

Jasper Kane’s Patent 2,327,191

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a4/7a/f6/26ab4769a3aa26/US2327191.pdf

(Kane, Finlay, and Amann, Production of Fumaric Acid. U.S. Patent 2,327,191, 1943.)

In U.S. Patent 2,327,191 – Production of Fumaric Acid, filed on December 7, 1939, inventors Jasper H. Kane, Alexander Finlay, and Philip F. Amann made 14 claims describing a new and commercially viable method for producing fumaric acid using mold fermentation. This patent represents significant innovation over earlier methods that rely on surface (shallow) fermentation, which produced very low yields. Patent 2,327,191 is one of the patents that Jasper Kane filed on his deep-tank fermentation methods. The patented method enables substantial production of fumaric acid with minimal byproducts, making recovery easier and cheaper. Overall, this patent’s key innovation is to demonstrate that controlled, aerated submerged fermentation can achieve high yields and enable mass production. The patent also demonstrates how Kane’s work helped shift fermentation from small-scale laboratory practices to scalable industrial production.

In Patent 2,327,191, the invention introduced a submerged aerobic fermentation process, in which molds, such as Rhizopus, Mucor, and Aspergillus, grow throughout a liquid medium rather than only on the surface. The process involves fermenting carbohydrate sources with nutrient salts while supplying oxygen. A neutralizer is added during fermentation to control acidity and increase yield.

Although Patent 2,327,191 does not directly mention penicillin, it describes a fermentation method that was later used in the mass production of penicillin. Jasper Kane filed many patents related to deep-tank fermentation, each addressing a different chemical or engineering challenge. The progression across these patents shows the accumulation of technical expertise over time, as each innovation addressed a different challenge in fermentation, from oxygen transfer and agitation to biological efficiency and product purification. These patents demonstrate that Jasper H. Kane was a leading expert in deep-tank fermentation and played a central role in transforming fermentation from laboratory techniques to industrial-scale processes. This argument reinforces the idea that the breakthrough in penicillin production was not a single discovery, but the cumulative result of incremental engineering advances that enabled reliable, large-scale fermentation.

The deep-tank fermentation technology pioneered by Jasper H. Kane fundamentally transformed the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. It remains a core production method in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Today, modern bioreactors, as direct descendants of Kane’s system, are enhanced with advanced sensors, automation, and sterile engineering, and are used to produce many drugs, including antibiotics, insulin, monoclonal antibodies, vaccines, and recombinant proteins. The same methods are also used to produce organic acids, vitamins, and enzymes, as Dr. Kane discussed on the CBS Radio Network program Adventures in Science, “Chemical progress” (Smithsonian Institution, Box 400 of 459, Folder 41, Record Unit 7091, 1954). In fact, this technology has been in continuous use from World War II to the present. Taken together, this enduring legacy demonstrates that the critical transformation of penicillin lay not simply in its discovery, but in the development of scalable industrial processes that made it widely available, highlighting the central role of engineering innovation in shaping modern medicine.