Alexander Fleming (1881

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"BBC Science Notebook: Discovery of Penicillin" — August 28, 1945

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Biography

Sir Alexander Fleming 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". This was the first antibiotic substance discovered. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease".

Timeline

The story of Alexander Fleming, told in moments.

1881 Birth

Born at Lochfield farm near Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland. Third of four children. His father is 59 at the time of his second marriage and dies when Alexander is seven.

Did losing your father at seven change the course of your childhood? What was life like on a Scottish farm in the 1880s?

1906 Life

Qualifies with an MBBS from St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. Distinction. He'd only enrolled because his brother Tom, already a doctor, suggested it. The tuition came from an uncle's inheritance.

Would you have become a doctor without your brother Tom pushing you? Did the inheritance money feel like a lucky break or a burden?

1922 Event

Discovers lysozyme, an antibacterial enzyme. The source: his own nasal mucus, dripped onto a bacterial culture when he had a cold. He names the bacterium it kills Micrococcus lysodeikticus.

You discovered lysozyme from your own runny nose. Were you embarrassed or thrilled? Did colleagues think you were eccentric for culturing your own mucus?

1928 Event

Returns from a two-week vacation to find mold contaminating a staphylococcus culture in his lab. The mold has killed the bacteria around it in a clear ring. He identifies the mold as Penicillium rubens. He publishes the finding. Nobody pays much attention.

That mold. Did you almost throw the contaminated plate away? Were you frustrated that nobody paid attention when you published?

1945 Event

Shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who did the work of turning his accidental discovery into a mass-produced drug. Fleming's lab observation. Their engineering. Together: the single greatest victory over infectious disease in history.

Did it bother you that Florey and Chain got equal credit? How does it feel knowing penicillin saved 200 million lives from your accident?

1955 Death

Dies of a heart attack in London. He is 73. Penicillin has by then saved an estimated 200 million lives.

Looking back, was the discovery really just luck? What would you tell scientists who throw out contaminated cultures?

In Their Own Words (4)

I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this—never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be—usually is, in fact—a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.

Lecture at Harvard University. Quoted in Joseph Sambrook, David W. Russell, Molecular Cloning (2001), Vol. 1, 153., 2001

How fortunate we didn't have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably not have been granted a licence, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realised.

Reported in Dennis V. Parke, "Clinical Pharmacokinetics in Drug Safety Evaluation," in ATLA: Alternatives To Laboratory Animals, vol. 22, no. 3, May/June 1994, p. 208., 1994

When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, ... But I guess that was exactly what I did.

1928

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.