In 1945, Sir
Alexander Fleming was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine for the discovery of penicillin and its uses in curing infectious
diseases. The son of a Scottish farmer, Fleming was born in Lochfield,
Scotland on August 6, 1881.
Fleming studied in London under Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine
therapy, after graduating with distinction from Medical School.
His academic career
was interrupted by the first World War, when he served as a captain in the
Army Medical Corps.
According to the Nobel
Lectures, Fleming's most famous discovery began as an accident:
"In 1928, while working on influenza virus, he
observed that mould had developed accidentally on a staphylococcus culture
plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself.
He was inspired to further experiment and he found that a mould culture
prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named
the active substance penicillin."
Fleming was knighted
in 1944, and won the Nobel Prize the following year.
Fleming married an
Irish woman, Sarah Marion , in 1915, but she died in 1949. In 1953, he
remarried, this time to a Greek woman, Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Voureka, a
Greek colleague at St. Mary's. Fleming's son from his first marriage is a
family physician.
Dr Fleming died in
March 11th of 1955, at the age of 73. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral
in London.
