Howard Walter Florey

Howard Walter Florey (Baron Florey of Adelaide), 1898-1968, British pathologist, b. Australia. He was educated at Adelaide Univ. and at Cambridge and Oxford and returned to Oxford as professor of pathology in 1935. Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Alexander Fleming and Ernst B. Chain for work on penicillin. In 1939, under a Rockefeller grant, Florey and his associates began work on penicillin and proved its effectiveness against many harmful bacteria.

Bibliography: See biography by L. Bickel (1973).

Florey, Howard Walter, Baron (1898–1968) Australian pathologist, who moved to Oxford in 1922. After working in Cambridge and Sheffield (studying lysozyme), he returned to Oxford in 1935. There he teamed up with Ernst Chain and by 1939 they succeeded in isolating and purifying penicillin. They also developed a method of producing the drug in large quantities and carried out its first clinical trials. The two men shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with penicillin's discoverer, Alexander Fleming.