Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955) was a Scottish bacteriologist and physician whose accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928 launched the age of antibiotics. [1] Working at St Mary's Hospital in London, he observed that a mould contaminating one of his bacterial cultures released a substance that killed surrounding bacteria. [3] For this work he shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, who later isolated and mass-produced the drug. [2]
Early life and education
Alexander Fleming was born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield, a farm near Darvel in East Ayrshire, Scotland. [1] He attended local schools and Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London, where he initially worked as a shipping clerk. A small inheritance allowed him to enrol at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, from which he qualified in medicine and where he would spend nearly his entire professional career. [1]
Early research and lysozyme
Fleming joined the research team of the bacteriologist Almroth Wright at St Mary's and, during the First World War, served in the Royal Army Medical Corps studying wound infections. His work convinced him that many antiseptics used on soldiers harmed the body's own defences more than they helped. [3] In 1922 he discovered lysozyme, an enzyme with mild antibacterial properties found in tears, saliva and other bodily fluids, an early demonstration of the body's natural defences against microbes. [1]
Discovery of penicillin
In September 1928, returning to his laboratory after a holiday, Fleming noticed that a culture plate of Staphylococcus bacteria had become contaminated with a mould later identified as Penicillium notatum. Around the mould the bacteria had been destroyed, leaving a clear zone. [3] He deduced that the mould was releasing an antibacterial substance, which he named penicillin. Fleming published his findings in 1929, but he was unable to purify the compound in usable quantities, and the discovery attracted limited attention for more than a decade. [2]
Nobel Prize and later career
The therapeutic potential of penicillin was realised only when Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, working at Oxford in the late 1930s and early 1940s, isolated and stabilised the drug and demonstrated its power against infection. [2] Penicillin was produced on an industrial scale in time to treat wounded soldiers during the Second World War. Fleming was knighted in 1944, and in 1945 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Florey and Chain. [2] In his later years he travelled widely, receiving numerous honorary degrees and awards, and often warned that the misuse of antibiotics could lead bacteria to develop resistance. [3]
Legacy
Fleming died in London on 11 March 1955. [1] His discovery is regarded as one of the turning points of twentieth-century medicine, transforming the treatment of bacterial infections that had previously been frequently fatal. The antibiotics that followed penicillin have saved countless lives, while his prescient concern about resistant bacteria remains central to modern debates over antibiotic use. [3]
