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Alexander Fleming with a Petri dish. |
Basic Facts
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Biography Alexander Fleming was born on August 6, 1881 to a Scottish sheep-farming family or Darvel Scotland. He excelled early in schooling. He later went on the study at St. Mary's Hospital in London where he focused on medicine. In 1915, he married Sarah Marion McElroy and together had a son. After the war, Fleming started working with antibiotics because he saw a lot of the soldiers die of disease during the war. In 1928, while working on the influenza virus, he noticed that mould had accidentally developed on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mold had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He wanted to further experiment and he found that a mold culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named this Penicillin. Penicillin could treat Pneumonia, syphilis, gonorrhea, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and childbirth infections that once killed. Following the publication of his drug, Fleming won many awards including the Noble Prize in medicine in 1945. Fleming died on March 11, 1955 of a heart attack.
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Fleming working in a lab |
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Fleming talking on a radio show
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 Alexander Fleming |
 Fleming receiving the Noble Prize |
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Related Links http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1945/fleming-bio.html http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/fleming.html
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