Jasper H. Kane, biochemist, 101

BOCA RATON, Fla. -- Jasper Herbert Kane, a biochemist who suggested that antibiotics could be manufactured in mass quantities rather than dose-by-dose in a laboratory, has died. He was 101.

Mr. Kane died Tuesday in Boca Raton, according to his alma mater, Polytechnic University in New York City.

Mr. Kane began working as an assistant at the Chas. Pfizer & Co. chemical manufacturing plant in Brooklyn, N.Y., as a teenager. He studied nights at the Polytechnic Institute and graduated in 1928.

He continued working for Pfizer after receiving his degree. In 1942 he suggested using a fermentation process to mass-manufacture penicillin, streptomycin, and other antibiotics. The idea helped steer Pfizer, at the time a chemical supplier for the food industry, toward pharmaceutical production.

Mr. Kane eventually became Pfizer's vice president and director of biochemical research and development. He retired in 1953.