Benjamin Minge Duggar (1872–1956) is known best for his highly varied career, in which he made foundational contributions to botany and other scientific fields. Following the completion of a PhD in mycology and cytology from Cornell University in 1898 (and a following period of study abroad in Europe), he accepted a position as assistant professor of plant physiology at the university. The next year he became a physiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he studied the cultivation of mushrooms and the cotton root rot caused by Phymatotrichopsis omnivora . In 1902 he became professor of Botany at University of Missouri, and would continue as a professor in various roles at multiple universities. Perhaps the best illustration of his varied interests lies in the breadth of his publications, including the botanical textbooks Fungous Diseases of Plants (1909) and Plant Physiology (1915), the culmination of his research on fungal cultivation Mushroom Growing(1915), and his editorial role on the two-volume Biological Effects of Radiation (1939). He was forced to retire from his professorship at the University of Wisconsin by law in 1943 at the age of 71. This was not the end of his career; in fact, he is perhaps most widely known for his following work at the Lederle Laboratory division of the pharmaceutical company American Cyanamid, where he led a mycological research team that discovered Aureomycin (generic name Chlortetracycline, a product of Streptomyces aureofaciens ), one of the first "broad-spectrum" antibiotics.