Timeline Of The Life Of Alexander Fleming
Sir Alexander Fleming, born on 6th August 1881 was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He was knighted and honored with Nobel Prize in 1945 for his excellence in medicine, when he invented Penicillin along with Florey and Chain. |
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Throughout his life, Fleming offered his skills and talent to serve the nation and the countrymen. Fleming died at the age of 74 in the year 1955 due to heart attack. His soul rested in peace at St Paul's Cathedral where he was cremated.
Fleming was seventh of eight children of Hugh Fleming, a farmer. He spent most of his childhood in the lap of nature amongst the streams, valleys, and moor of the countryside. “We unconsciously learn a great deal from nature” believes this nature lover.
Like many other Scots, he too was forced to move out from his village to make a better living. Fleming left for London at the age of 13 and attended lectures at the Polytechnic School and also worked for 4 years in a shipping office. Fleming’s uncle left him a legacy which enabled him to study medicine from St Mary Hospital, London.
After he completed his medical study, he opted to be a surgeon but switch to bacteriology for some unknown reason.
He started to assist Sir Almroth Wright, the originator of vaccinotherapy (therapeutic inoculation for bacterial infection) and the first doctor to use antityphoid vaccines on human beings. Fleming was primarily involved in the research of Paul Ehrlich's Salvarsan in the treatment of syphilis. It was during the First World War when Fleming overwhelmed with the death of soldiers; decided to find the cure for the sudden infection that broke out.
In 1928 while he was working in his lab, he observed that, “some mold was growing on one of the dishes -- not too unusual -- but all around the mold, the staph bacteria had been killed -- very unusual.” That’s Funny, thought Fleming. After further research, it was found that the particular mold belongs to penicillium family hence penicillin was discovered.
However, due to poor base of chemistry, Fleming was helped by a group of chemists and biochemist but Howard Florey and Ernst Chain picked up the work later on. It was in 1945 when penicillin was used for the mass production of drugs and Alexander Fleming was knighted and honored with a Nobel Prize in the same year. Florey and Chain too shared this honor.
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The Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of Penicillin, Alexander Fleming was born on 6th August 1881 at Lochfield farm near Darvel in East Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the seventh child among eight other siblings. 