Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)

Alexander Fleming, born in 1881, was a Scottish biologist and pharmacist. He attended medical school at St. Mary's Hospital in London beginning in 1901 after inheriting money from an uncle. He began his career with the hopes of becoming a surgeon, however, the rifle club in which he was a member convinced him to enter the research department at St. Mary's. During this time he worked under bacteriologist Sir Almroth Wright. In 1908, he earned an MS and BS from St. Mary's and was given the option to teach lectures until 1914. He then worked as a captain in the Army Medical Corps during World War I. After the war, he returned to teach at St. Mary's and, in 1928, was elected Professor of Bacteriology.

During the years he was teaching after the war, Fleming worked to find anti-bacterial agents to successfully kill infections. During his time in the war, he realized that the antiseptics used to heal infectious wounds killed more soldiers than the infections did. In 1922, Fleming finally discovered a natural antibiotic created by the human body called lysozyme. In 1928, he discovered penicillin by accident. He noticed that some of his bacterial cultures had grown mold and fungus. He threw the contaminated dishes in a disinfectant thinking they were ruined. Not long after a visitor asked to see his work so he removed a couple of dishes that had not been submerged in the disinfectant. He noticed a small area around a fungus where bacteria would not grow. He isolated and extracted part of the agent from the mold Penicillium notatum, hence he termed the agent penicillin. Fleming tested Penicillin on many bacterial organisms such as those causing scarlet fever, pneumonia, and meningitis. His work was published in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology.

After his discovery, Fleming did not believe that this new antibiotic would be effective for infections in the human body. He continued conducting experiments with the antibiotic until 1940 when he enlisted the help of a chemist. Ernest Chain, along with Florey and Heatley, from Oxford, began experiments to purify penicillin so that it might be effective enough to treat infections in humans. After successfully doing this, penicillin was mass produced and distributed beginning in 1945.

Fleming's accidental discovery in 1928 was the beginning of modern antibiotics. He discovered during his work that bacteria can develop a resistance to antibiotics when too little penicillin was used. In 1945, Fleming, Florey, and Chain received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work with Penicillin. In 1955, Fleming died of a heart attack in London. His wife, Amalia Koutsour-Voureka, presented his Nobel Prize to the Savage Club where it remains to this day.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming
http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/Penicillin.htm

Pictures:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/46/Alexander-fleming.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Lysozyme_crystal1.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Penicillin_3D_Model.png#file