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Portrait of Alexander Fleming

Science · Biology

Alexander Fleming

1881–1955 · British (Scottish)

Bacteriology; medicine

Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish bacteriologist at St Mary's Hospital, London, who discovered the antibacterial enzyme lysozyme in 1921 and, in 1928, noticed that a Penicillium mould contaminating a culture plate killed the surrounding staphylococci. The substance he named penicillin was later purified and developed into a mass-produced drug by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford. The three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

How to spot them

  • ▸A mouldy petri dish at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, in 1928
  • ▸Penicillium notatum; the first antibiotic, penicillin
  • ▸Shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
  • ▸Born on a farm near Darvel, Ayrshire; buried in St Paul's Cathedral

Key discoveries & works

Discovery of penicillin (1928)

Found that Penicillium mould on a staphylococcus plate had destroyed the bacteria around it; published in 1929

Discovery of lysozyme (1921)

Found an antibacterial enzyme in nasal mucus, later also in tears, saliva and egg white

Paper on the antibacterial action of Penicillium cultures in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology (1929)

First report of the mould extract he named penicillin

Wartime research showing antiseptics could do more harm than good in deep wounds (1914–1918)

Working in France with the Royal Army Medical Corps, he found antiseptics killed white blood cells as well as bacteria

Key ideas

  • Penicillin opened the age of antibiotics, though its therapeutic development was mainly the work of Florey and Chain
  • Warned as early as his 1945 Nobel lecture that underdosing could make bacteria resistant to penicillin

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Lochfield farm near Darvel, Ayrshire; died in London and is buried in St Paul's Cathedral
  • •Spent his whole career at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, Paddington, initially under Sir Almroth Wright
  • •Discovered penicillin in September 1928 on returning from holiday to find a contaminated plate
  • •Knighted in 1944; Fellow of the Royal Society from 1943
  • •Shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
  • •Created 'germ paintings' by growing coloured microbes on agar
  • •Rector of the University of Edinburgh 1951–1954
  • •The Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum at St Mary's preserves his laboratory
  • •The popular story that his father saved the young Winston Churchill from drowning is a myth

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources