Alexander Fleming - Movies, Photos & Biography

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He initially worked in a shipping company before, thanks to various scholarships, he was able to begin studying medicine at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington in 1901. In 1906 Fleming completed his final exams. He then qualified as a surgeon. From 1908 Fleming began to work scientifically, initially in the hospital's vaccination laboratory with the microbiologist Sir Almroth Edward Wright. In 1921 Fleming became deputy head of the institute. In the same year he was able to identify and isolate lysozyme, an enzyme that has strong antibacterial properties. In 1928 he received the chair of bacteriology at the University of London. In September 1928, the discovery that made him world famous was blown directly onto his laboratory workstation: the air was used to transfer a mold spore to one of Fleming's culture dishes in which he was cultivating staphylococci. Actually an annoying event, because the bacterial colony was no longer usable for further investigations.

But Fleming found that the bacteria had, so to speak, dissolved near the mold. He had thus observed the bacteria-destroying power of penicillin. Fleming first used the name "Penicillin" on March 7, 1929. It goes back to the mold that belongs to the genus Penicillium. However, Fleming was not the first to make this significant observation. A number of scientists had previously found that Penicillium fungi inhibit the growth of bacteria. However, no one has investigated the causes of the observed effect or investigated the phenomenon further. Fleming submitted a report on his discovery to the British Journal of Experimental Pathology on May 10, 1929, which was published the following June. Although Fleming had recognized that the bacteria-killing effect of penicillin could effectively combat a number of infections such as suppuration, pneumonia or meningitis, the cure was initially denied a final breakthrough.

The problem was obtaining sufficient quantities to treat patients beyond the experimental phase. In addition, Fleming probably could not fully appreciate the significance of his discovery at the time. It was only shortly before the start of the Second World War that science remembered Fleming's work. From 1940 onwards, attempts were made to produce penicillin in larger quantities on the initiative of the researchers Sir Ernest Boris Chain and Lord Howard Walter Florey. The two traveled to the USA in 1941 to initiate everything necessary there. In 1944, highly concentrated penicillin was finally produced on an industrial scale. Fleming was knighted in 1944, and in 1945 he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine together with Chain and Florey. In 1946, Fleming became director of the Vaccination Institute at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, which was renamed the Wright-Fleming Institute two years later. He retired in 1948.

Sir Alexander Fleming died on March 11, 1955 in Chelsea (London).

Filmography

Actor

Type

Year

Biography of the Millennium: 100 People - 1000 Years Mini-Series1999Self - #36

A Science Odyssey TV Series1998Self

Panorama TV Series1953Self

Matters of Life and Death TV Series1949Self - Presenter

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