Who Is Alexander Fleming?

Sir Alexander Fleming is one of history's most prized persons. Fleming's work is incredibly significant to humanity--his discovery of penicillin was nearly an accident, but the results have saved millions of lives.

Early Life

• Alexander was born on farm called Lochfield. Lochfield is located near a small town called Darvel, which is in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the third of eight children in his family. Sir Fleming was a student at Louden Moor School, Darvel School, and Kilmarnock Academy while in his boyhood. He later moved to London to attend the Polytechnic. After spending four years in a shipping office, Alexander entered St. Mary's Medical School at London University. In 1906, he qualified with distinction.

World War I

• In 1914, Fleming joined the British Royal Army Corps. His goal was to come up with a cure that would help reduce the number of British soldiers dying from wounds that became infected. Fleming argued the wounds were becoming infected because the antiseptics that were used at the time were ineffective. A sad ending to his World War I adventure occurred when his argument was ignored and hardly anything was done for many wounded soldiers.

Major Discovery

• One day in 1928, Fleming was working at St. Mary's Hospital. Just before throwing out some old plates, he happened to notice a blue mold that had a bacteria-free surrounding. He inspected the mold further and found that it prevented the growth of staphylococci. Even after being diluted 800 times, the substance, later named penicillin, was still able to prevent the growth of bacteria.

Further Research

• While Fleming found that his new discovery could kill off several different types of bacteria and was relatively safe for the human body, research was stopped because of a lack of funding. About a decade later, other scientists were able to find efficient ways to produce penicillin, and drug companies began to mass-produce large quantities.

Other Notes

• Fleming won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. Before passing away due to a sudden heart attack in 1955, Dr. Fleming was married two times, and had one son who was, for a time, a general medical practitioner.