360Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
In September 1928, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming noticed that mould growing on a laboratory dish had killed the bacteria around it. He named the substance penicillin. In the 1940s, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain turned it into a medicine, the first widely used antibiotic, saving millions of lives.
Alexander Fleming worked at St Mary's Hospital in London. Returning from holiday in September 1928, he found that one of his dishes of Staphylococcus bacteria had been contaminated with a mould. Around the mould, the bacteria had died.
Fleming identified the mould as Penicillium and named the active substance penicillin. He published his findings in 1929, but it was hard to produce in useful amounts.
In 1939, a team at the University of Oxford led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, with Norman Heatley, found ways to purify penicillin. In 1941, they treated their first patient. Mass production, especially in the United States, followed during the Second World War.
Penicillin cured infections that had often been deadly, such as pneumonia and infected wounds. Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Fleming also warned that misuse could make bacteria resistant, a problem doctors still face today.
- September 1928
- Fleming notices the mould
- 1929
- Fleming publishes his findings
- 1941
- First patient treated with purified penicillin
- 1945
- Nobel Prize for Fleming, Florey and Chain
Sources: Nobel Prize · Imperial College London · Britannica.