Fleming, Sir Alexander

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Fleming, Sir Alexander (1881–1955). Discoverer of penicillin. A farmer's son from Ayrshire, Fleming moved to London at 13 to live with his doctor brother, and then went to St Mary's hospital for training in medicine. He spent his career there. He was assistant to Sir Almroth Wright, working on bacteria, seeking a magic bullet which would be harmless to our cells but fatal to bacteria. In 1928 he noticed that a culture of staphylococcus in his untidy laboratory was being attacked by a mould, which he isolated and grew. He had high hopes of it, but it attracted little attention, and it was not until the Second World War with the work in Oxford of H. W. Florey and E. B. Chain that penicillin was purified to be clinically effective. The three shared a Nobel Prize in 1945.

David Knight

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