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Sir Alexander Fleming (August 6, 1881–March 11, 1955) is famous as the discoverer of the antibiotic substance lysozyme and for starting the research that led to the development of Penicillium notatum into penicillin.
Fleming was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. He later attended St. Mary's medical school until World War I broke out. He participated in a battlefield hospital with many of his colleagues in the fronts of France. Being exposed to the horrid medical infections by the dying soldiers, he returned to St. Mary's after the war with renewed energy in searching for an improved antiseptic.
Both of Fleming's discoveries happened entirely by accident during the 1920s. The first, lysozyme, was discovered after mucus from his nose dropped into a bacterium laced petri dish (he sneezed). A few days later, it was noted that bacteria where the mucus had fallen had destroyed the bacteria.
Fleming's labs were usually in disarray, which led to be to his advantage. In September 1928, he was sorting through the many idle experiments strewn about his lab. He inspected each specimen before discarding it and noticed an interesting fungal colony had grown as a contaminant on one of the agar plates streaked with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Fleming inspected the petri dish further and found that the bacterial colonies around the fungus were transparent because their cells were lysing. Lysis is the breakdown of cells, and in this case, potentially harmful bacteria. The importance was immediately recognized, however the discovery was still underestimated, initially used to clean his glassware. Fleming issued a publication about penicillin in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1929.
Fleming worked with the mold for some time, but refining and growing it was a difficult process better suited to chemists. In part by believing its effect may only hold valid with small infections and further by not being well received within the community, the drug was not developed for mass distribution until World War II when Baron Florey and Ernst Boris Chain developed a method of purifying penicillin to a form that was useful for medical treatment of infection.
For his achievements, Fleming was both knighted (in 1944) and shared the Nobel prize for medicine in 1945 with Baron Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
Fleming was a lifelong member of the Chelsea Arts Club, a private club for artists of all genres, founded in 1891 at the suggestion of the painter James McNeil Whistler. Fleming was admitted to the club after he made "germ paintings," in which he drew with a culture loop using spores of highly pigmented bacteria. The bacteria were invisible while he painted, but when cultured made bright colors.
- Serratia marcescens - red
- Chromobacterium violaceum -purple
- Micrococcus luteus - yellow
- Micrococcus varians - white
- Micrococcus roseus - pink
- Bacillus sp. - orange
Fleming died in 1955 of a heart attack. He was buried as a national hero in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. His discovery of penicillin had changed the world of modern medicines by introducing the age of useful antibiotics.