Alexander Fleming came from Scotland, where his parents and brothers and sisters worked on the farm. When his father died in his young years his brother started to take care about leading their farm with 800 acres. Next his brother finished a study of medicine and opened his own practice in London. Four Fleming’s brothers and their sister soon moved to London. Alec came in his 14 to London. After graduating from poly- technological school he worked at the ship - constructing firm but he was not liked there. When in 1900 the war started between The United Kingdom and its colonies in the South Africa, Alec and his two brothers registered at the Scottish regiment. After returning he started to study medicine (bacteriology) at Doctor school of The Virgin Mary on his brother instigation. He stayed there too after finishing his study and he was interested in the research of bacteriologic infections.

Sir Alexander Fleming
(picture from web page http://www.nobel.se/laureates/medicine-1945-1-bio.html)

When the first war out broke the great part of laboratory was moved to France to create the laboratory for a field hospital. Here Fleming met with a terrible manifestation of infection on which soldiers was dying very quickly and which was more horrible than enemy’s air force. Fleming had a feeling that here had to be something what could fight successfully with the infection what could stop it. He discovered lysosome, the enzyme that you could find out in a lot of fluid of the man body (for example in tears). This enzyme had a strong antibacterial effect but on the strong infection was not effective. And so Fleming was searching for it long.

Fleming photography of the small bowl with bacteria and penicillin
¨(picture from web page http://www.uel.ac.uk/research/rds/advances/penn.html)

He had not so time by his working enthusiasms and temp to be able to waste with it on keeping order and cleanness in his laboratory. And so when he returned from his holiday in 1928 he found in a pail where a lot of Petri dishes in which he cultivated bacteria were not washed. He put them in a dish solution gradually. But he just stopped himself: One kind of mould grew in one bowl in a normal way but it was not normal that it destroyed bacteria staphy lococcus. He take the sample of the blue mould and learned that this kind belonged to the gender penicillium (later marked as Penicillium notatum). When he presented his discovery one year later it was not woken up any interest, the same way as the publication of news about penicillin and its possibility of using in British Journal of Experimental Pathology. A certain time Fleming was trying to cultivate the pure penicillin but he did not manage it.

Progress came after 1935 when Australian Howard Floury the professor of pathology at Oxford University and German biochemist Erns Chain started to do experiments with the penicillin mould. They got ahead before Fleming: they did not make test only on Petri dashes but so on living mice and later on men. The experimental administration of penicillin demonstrated its unbelievable effectiveness. It was 1941 already and the Great Britain entered in the War. Florey advantaged of his connections with Rockfellerś foundational the U.S. A: Which subsidized next research. The most problem was the adequate producing of penicillin. The produce was difficult and expensive. Florey leaved with his colleagues to Illinois in The U.S.A. The local agronomy Centrum developed fermentation in a suitable way, which was needed for growing of penicillin. Curiously was discovered that penicillin liked maize and so the production was 500 times higher than before. In this time The U.S.A. entered in the war. The government was interested in a production of penicillin and set 21 chemical companies on its production. And so from January to May 1943 was been producing only 400 million units of penicillin at the end of the war it was 650 milliard. The first patients who used it were soldiers from the Second World War.

(picture from web page http://www.jenapharm.de/ehist.htm)

Since this antibiotic has been saving thousand lives. Alexander Fleming got 25 honoraries, 26 ranks, and memberships in 87 academies and societies and 18 prizes from which the most prestige prize was Nobel Prize and he was awarded by it together with Florey and Chain.