ABSTRACT
The Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz began its screening programme for antifungal antibiotics in 1958. Since then, employees on business trips and on holiday have routinely carried plastic bags for the collection of soil samples for the screening of micro-organisms (Tribe, 1998). In 1969, Dr Hans Peter Frey, working as a biologist at Sandoz, spent a few weeks’ holiday in Norway with his wife. During the trip, Dr Frey collected more than 50 soil samples (Frey, pers comm, 1998).
