Alexander Fleming began his elementary schooling at Loudoun Moor School.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
16 Jamieson Rd, Darvel KA17 0AU, United Kingdom
Alexander Fleming attended Darvel School.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
Sutherland Dr, Kilmarnock KA3 7DF, United Kingdom
Alexander Fleming enrolled in Kilmarnock Academy in 1894.
College/University
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
4–12 Little Titchfield St, Fitzrovia, London W1W 7BY, United Kingdom
Fleming attended Regent Street Polytechnic (now University of Westminster).
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
St Mary's Hospital, Praed St, Paddington, London W2 1NY, United Kingdom
Fleming began his medical studies at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School (now Imperial College London) in 1901.
Career
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1940
Alexander Fleming with Dr. Robert Coghill.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1945
Paris, France
Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin, being honored with the Legion of Honour at the Academy of Medicine in Paris, by General Charles de Gaulle. (Photo by Keystone)
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1946
Alexander Fleming shows Minister of Supply John Wilmot a bottle of mould, from which the drug penicillin can be obtained.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working with a microscope in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working with a microscope in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
Alexander Fleming
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working with a microscope in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1951
British bacteriologist and Nobel laureate Sir Alexander Fleming working in his laboratory.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1952
Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
Alexander Fleming is carried by students after he is appointed rector of the university in Edinburgh in Scotland in the United Kingdom, on February 20, 1952. (Photo by Keystone-France)
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1952
Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
Alexander Fleming delivering his rectorial address from the platform of the McEwan Hall, after being installed as Rector of Edinburgh University.
Gallery of Alexander Fleming
1953
London, United Kingdom
Alexander Fleming with his bride Amalia after the ceremony of the Chelsea Register Office.
Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin, being honored with the Legion of Honour at the Academy of Medicine in Paris, by General Charles de Gaulle. (Photo by Keystone)
Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
Alexander Fleming is carried by students after he is appointed rector of the university in Edinburgh in Scotland in the United Kingdom, on February 20, 1952. (Photo by Keystone-France)
Alexander Fleming was a Scottish doctor, physician, microbiologist, and pharmacologist. He discovered penicillin and received the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Background
Alexander Fleming was born in rural Lochfield, in East Ayrshire, Scotland, on August 6, 1881. His parents, Hugh and Grace, were farmers, and Alexander was one of their four children. He also had four half-siblings who were the surviving children from his father Hugh's first marriage.
His country upbringing in southwestern Scotland sharpened his capacities for observation and appreciation of the natural world at an early age.
Education
Alexander Fleming began his elementary schooling at Loudoun Moor and then moved on to a larger school at Darvel before enrolling in Kilmarnock Academy in 1894. In 1895 he moved to London to live with his elder brother Thomas (who worked as an oculist) and completed his basic education at Regent Street Polytechnic (now University of Westminster).
After working as a London shipping clerk, Fleming began his medical studies at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School (now Imperial College of London) in 1901, funded by a scholarship and a legacy from his uncle. There he won the 1908 gold medal as a top medical student at the University of London. At first, he planned to become a surgeon, but a temporary position in the laboratories of the Inoculation Department at St. Mary’s Hospital convinced him that his future lay in the new field of bacteriology. There he came under the influence of bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Edward Wright, whose ideas of vaccine therapy seemed to offer a revolutionary direction in medical treatment.
Alexander Fleming had planned to become a surgeon, but a temporary position in the Inoculation Department at St. Mary's Hospital changed his path toward the then-new field of bacteriology. There, in 1908 - 1914, he developed his research skills under the guidance of bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Edward Wright, whose revolutionary ideas of vaccine therapy represented an entirely new direction in medical treatment.
During World War I, Fleming served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He worked as a bacteriologist, studying wound infections in a makeshift lab that had been set up by Wright in Boulogne, France. Through his research there, Fleming discovered that antiseptics commonly used at the time were doing more harm than good, as their diminishing effects on the body's immunity agents largely outweighed their ability to break down harmful bacteria - therefore, more soldiers were dying from antiseptic treatment than from the infections they were trying to destroy. Fleming recommended that, for more effective healing, wounds simply be kept dry and clean. However, his recommendations largely went unheeded.
Returning to St. Mary's after the war, in 1918, Fleming took on a new position: assistant director of St. Mary's Inoculation Department. (He would become a professor of bacteriology at the University of London in 1928 and an emeritus professor of bacteriology in 1948.)
In 1946, Fleming succeeded Almroth Edward Wright as head of St. Mary's Inoculation Department, which was renamed the Wright-Fleming Institute. Additionally, Fleming served as president of the Society for General Microbiology, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, and an honorary member of nearly every medical and scientific society in the world.
Outside of the scientific community, Fleming was named rector of Edinburgh University from 1951 to 1954, a freeman of many municipalities, and Honorary Chief Doy-gei-tau of the American Indian Kiowa tribe. He was also awarded honorary doctorate degrees from nearly 30 European and American universities.
Fleming died of a heart attack on March 11, 1955, at his home in London, England. He was survived by his second wife, Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, and his only child, Robert, from his first marriage.
(This audiobook is from a 1950 talk Alexander Fleming gave...)
1950
Religion
Alexander Fleming had a Presbyterian background but was not particularly religious. His first wife was a Roman Catholic.
Views
In November 1921, while nursing a cold, Fleming discovered lysozyme, a mildly antiseptic enzyme present in body fluids, when a drop of mucus dripped from his nose onto a culture of bacteria. Thinking that his mucus might have some kind of effect on bacterial growth, he mixed it with the culture. A few weeks later, he observed that the bacteria had been dissolved. This marked Fleming's first great discovery, as well as a significant contribution to human immune system research. (As it turned out, however, lysozyme had no effect on the most destructive bacteria.)
In September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory after a month away with his family and noticed that a culture of Staphylococcus aureus he had left out had become contaminated with a mold (later identified as Penicillium notatum). He also discovered that the colonies of staphylococci surrounding this mold had been destroyed.
He later said of the incident, "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 suppose that was exactly what I did." He at first called the substance "mold juice," and then named it "penicillin," after the mold that produced it.
Thinking he had found an enzyme more powerful than lysozyme, Fleming decided to investigate further. What he found out, though, was that it was not an enzyme at all, but an antibiotic - one of the first antibiotics to be discovered. Further development of the substance was not a one-man operation, as his previous efforts had been, so Fleming recruited two young researchers. The three men, unfortunately, failed to stabilize and purify penicillin, but Fleming pointed out that penicillin had clinical potential, both in topical and injectable forms, if it could be developed properly.
On the heels of Fleming's discovery, a team of scientists from the University of Oxford - led by Howard Florey and his co-worker, Ernst Chain - isolated and purified penicillin. The antibiotic eventually came into use during World War II, revolutionizing battlefield medicine and, on a much broader scale, the field of infection control.
Florey, Chain, and Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but their relationship was tainted over who should receive the most credit for penicillin. The press tended to emphasize Fleming's role due to the compelling back-story of his chance discovery and his greater willingness to be interviewed.
Quotations:
"One sometimes finds, what one is not looking for. 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 suppose that was exactly what I did."
"For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Roentgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new..."
"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."
"It is possible that in ten years’ time penicillin itself will be a back number and will be replaced by something better. It is quite certain though that to displace penicillin any newcomer will have to be very, very good."
"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."
"You do not know what you will find, you may set out to find one thing and end up by discovering something entirely different."
Membership
Alexander Fleming was a Fellow of the Royal Society, earned a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons.
He served as President of the Society for General Microbiology, he was a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Science and Honorary Member of almost all the medical and scientific societies of the world.
Royal Society
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United Kingdom
Royal Society of Edinburgh
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United Kingdom
Royal Colleges of Surgeons
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United Kingdom
Personality
Even though he had a solid reputation as a great researcher, Fleming's lab and workspace were often very messy.
He had been studying the different properties of a strain of staphylococcus bacteria but allowed mold to grow in the petri dish where a sample was stored due to these lab conditions.
Quotes from others about the person
"I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled by a mold falling on it, and I propose to recognize the possibility of extracting an antibiotic from this mold'." - Hans Seyle.
"The history of penicillin is one of the disgraces of medical research. Fleming published his classic paper in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology for June 1929, but it was not until 1939 that Florey followed up the clue. An antiseptic which is almost ideal, inasmuch as it has no toxic effects, was allowed to slumber for ten years. Had it not been for the exigencies of the present war it might be slumbering still." - Waldemar Kaempffert.
Connections
In 1915, Fleming married Sarah Marion McElroy of Killala, Ireland, who died in 1949. Their son Robert Fleming (1924-2015) was a general medical practitioner.
Fleming married again in 1953, his bride was Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Voureka, a Greek colleague at St. Mary’s.