Alexander Fleming, associated with the discovery of penicillin. Wikimedia Commons.
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In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned from a holiday to his London laboratory and noticed mould contaminating a culture of Staphylococcus bacteria. Around the mould, bacterial growth had been inhibited. Fleming identified the mould as producing a substance he called penicillin. Turning that observation into a reliable medicine required years of further work. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, researchers including Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and their team developed methods to purify and test penicillin. Large-scale production during the Second World War helped transform treatment of bacterial infections.
