“WHO IS ABEL WOLMAN?”
By Alexandra Shamash
February 24, 2007

Born in 1892, Abel Wolman, a sanitary engineer and Professor at Johns Hopkins University, traveled all over the world helping all the governments that hired him. The big question is, why would governments hire him?

Abel Wolman showed the governments of many countries how to clean their water. He and his partner, Linn Enslow, discovered a formula to clean water by adding just enough chlorine to kill the bad germs, but not enough to injure people. A dose of chlorine that might make water from one place safe to drink could be too weak to kill the germs in water from a second place. The formula solved that problem.

Wolman and Enslow’s formula is still used today by water treatment plants around the world. It provides safe drinking water for millions of people. Before Wolman’s discovery, a glass of water could kill you. You could catch Typhoid, Cholera, and Dysentery. His formula saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Some of the places whose water supplies he cleaned were Baltimore, Detroit, Seatlle, Portland and other U.S. cities. He advised governments of Sri Lanka, India, Brazil, and more than 40 countries in Latin American, Asia and Africa. He developed the water system for all of Israel.

Abel Wolman made what was probably the most important contribution to public health in the 20th century. Because of him, Americans have some of the safest and cleanest drinking water anywhere in the world. He died in 1989 at the age of 96.

Professor Wolman was my Great-Great-Great Uncle.

About the author:

Alexandra Shamash is 10 years old and in the 4th grade. This is the first report she has ever written. The assignment was to do a report on someone who has helped people in the health field.

Editor’s Note: This report was published with permission from Juli Shamash on behalf of Alexandra.