Ten fun facts about Alexander Fleming
Fact 1
Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6, 1881.
Fact 2
He attended medical school in London and graduated in 1906. He studied bacteriology.
Fact 3
Fleming assisted in battlefield hospitals in France during World War I (1911 – 1918) where he observed soldiers dying of septicemia or some infection in spite of surviving initial battlefield wounds.
Fact 4
In 1927 he investigated the properties of staphylococci. The laboratory where Fleming discovered and tested penicillin is named the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.
Fact 5
Fleming made the discovery of penicillin public in 1929 after conducting many experiments. The research did not stir up enough interest though he published a report in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology and he continued worked on the mold for several years.
Fact 6
The penicillin mold was purified and became a very viable antibiotic all over the world due to the efforts of Howard Florey and Ernst Chain during World War II.
Fact 7
Fleming received the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1945 along with Florey and Chain.
Fact 8
He was knighted as Knights Bachelor in 1944.
Fact 9
Fleming died of a heart failure in London on March 11, 1955 at the age of 73.
Fact 10
In 1999, Time magazine named Fleming one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century.
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