Also noted: scientist H. Boyd Woodruff, actor Kevin Geer

H. Boyd Woodruff, 99, a farmer's son whose groundbreaking research enabled fellow scientists to harvest an arsenal of lifesaving antibiotics from ordinary dirt, died on Jan. 19 at his home in Watchung, N.J.

Woodruff was instrumental in isolating two microbes that, while effective against tuberculosis and other infections, proved toxic to humans. But his findings in the early 1940s inspired the rapid development of streptomycin, the miracle cure used to treat tuberculosis, typhoid, plague and other diseases that did not respond to penicillin and other drugs.

"This was the eureka moment in all antibiotic discovery," Douglas Eveleigh, a professor emeritus of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University, said of Woodruff's research in an e-mail Thursday.

"The pharmaceutical industry caught on very rapidly, and there followed an avalanche of antibiotics," Eveleigh said. "This was all dependent on the Woodruff proof of concept in screening for antibiotic production."

In 1942, Woodruff left his laboratory at Rutgers to join Merck & Co., the pharmaceutical giant, where he oversaw the introduction of other antibiotics, vitamins B12 and C, and riboflavin; a treatment for a rare cancer called Wilms tumor; a pneumonia vaccine, and a drug used to treat river blindness.

His mentor at Rutgers, Selman Waksman, and his Merck colleague William Campbell, who developed Avermectin for river blindness, both won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Harold Boyd Woodruff, known as Boyd, was born on July 22, 1917, in Bridgeton, N.J.

Actor Michael Mastro, a friend who appeared with Geer in both those plays, said the cause appeared to be a sudden heart attack.

Geer made his Broadway debut in 1988 as Mitch in a revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," which starred Blythe Danner and Aidan Quinn. He played one of the squabbling jurors in Scott Ellis' production of "Twelve Angry Men" and a drug-addicted jazz trombonist in "Side Man," both in its off-Broadway cast in 1998 and during its subsequent Broadway run, for which it won a Tony Award for best new play. In 2009 he was a laid-off factory worker in Jeffrey Sweet's off-off-Broadway drama "Flyovers."

On TV, he had an emotional turn as an amnesiac sergeant on "M*A*S*H" in 1978 and later appeared on three different iterations of "Law & Order," including a performance as a white supremacist who bombs a subway.

His films included "The Pelican Brief" (1993), with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, and "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (2009), with a cast that included Jeff Bridges, George Clooney and Kevin Spacey.

His last credited film role was as a security guard who takes advantage of a homeless heroin addict played by Jennifer Connelly in Paul Bettany's film "Shelter" (2015).

Kevin Scully Geer was born in Reno, Nev., on Nov. 7, 1952.