Sir Alexander Fleming summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Alexander Fleming.

Sir Alexander Fleming, (born Aug. 6, 1881, Lochfield, Ayr, Scot.—died March 11, 1955, London, Eng.), Scottish bacteriologist. While serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War I, he conducted research on antibacterial substances that would be nontoxic to humans. In 1928 he inadvertently discovered penicillin when he noticed that a mold contaminating a bacterial culture was inhibiting the bacteria’s growth. He shared a 1945 Nobel Prize with Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, who both carried Fleming’s basic discovery further in isolating, purifying, testing, and producing penicillin in quantity.

Nobel Prize Summary

Nobel Prize, any of the prizes (five in number until 1969, when a sixth was added) that are awarded annually from a fund bequeathed for that purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual

physiology Summary

Physiology, study of the functioning of living organisms, animal or plant, and of the functioning of their constituent tissues or cells. The word physiology was first used by the Greeks around 600 bce to describe a philosophical inquiry into the nature of things. The use of the term with specific

medicine Summary

Medicine, the practice concerned with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease. The World Health Organization at its 1978 international conference held in the Soviet Union produced the Alma-Ata Health Declaration, which was designed to serve governments as a

Alexander Fleming on antiseptics Summary

Writing on the very eve (1928) of his famed accidental discovery of that world-changing antibiotic he called penicillin, Scottish bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), later Sir Alexander, laid out the problem his work would begin to solve. Fleming’s co-author was