Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin changed medicine for ever. A farmer's son from Ayrshire, he worked at St Mary's Hospital in London. In 1928 he returned from holiday to find a mould had killed bacteria in one of his dishes. He realised it produced a powerful germ-killer. Years later, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain turned it into a mass-produced drug. Antibiotics have since saved many millions of lives. Fleming warned early that bacteria could become resistant.
Key Milestones
1906: St Mary's – joins hospital
1922: Lysozyme – discovery
1928: Penicillin – discovered
1944: Knighthood – Sir Alexander
Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases".
