Alexander Fleming
By: Gabe Wisniewski
Alexander Fleming was born August 6, 1881 in Lochfield, in East Ayreshire, Scotland. In 1895 Fleming moved to London, with his older brother. He then went to school at Regent Street Polytechnic. Then, in 1900 he entered into the Territorial Army. Fleming soon became interested in medical field, so he decided to enter into the field in 1901. Fleming attended the St. Mary's Medical School of England, he won the top medical student in 1908. Fleming wanted to become a biologist, but he changed his path into becoming a bacteriologist. When World War 1 began Fleming served in the Royal Medical Corps. Fleming began to study the wounds the men suffered during the war, Fleming learned that the antiseptics they were using were doing a lot of harm to the men instead of actually helping them. In 1921 Alexander discovered lysozyme an antiseptic mucus. A month later Fleming decided to return back to his lab. But, something amazing thing had happened. He had accidentally left out a culture of Staphylococcus aureus which had began to grow a mold. The mold killed all of the bacteria around it. Fleming soon learned that what he had discovered was an antibiotic, the first of it's kind. He decided to name this antibiotic Penicillin. Two scientists of Oxford University named Howard Florey, and Ernst Chain began to try to work on the substance so that it could be used as medicine. In 1945 the three man shared the Nobel Prize for their work on Penicillin. In 1944 Alexander Fleming was knighted. He died March 11, 1955 from a heart attack
Alexander Fleming's Discovery of Penicillin