As part of his doctoral research, Albert Schatz, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, diligently worked alone in a basement laboratory to find an antibiotic to treat tuberculosis. In October of 1943, Schatz discovered streptomycin. But his professor, Selman Waksman, took the credit, relegating Schatz to the footnotes of history.

Over fifty years later, German-born Inge Auerbacher read an article that named Schatz as co-discoverer of the drug. As a young Jewish girl during World War II, Auerbacher was a prisoner at Terezin...