Short Biography of Alexander Fleming || Noble Prize Winner || Biologist

Alexander Fleming who discovered the antibiotic penicillin accidentally in the year 1928. While he was working as a professor of bacteriology at the St. Mary's Hospital in London, he observed that a bacterial plate of Staphylococcus bacteria got contaminated with a mold fungus called penicillinum. The bacterial colonies that grew in proximity to the mold died. He extracted the fungal juice and found that it could effectively kill bacteria responsible for diseases such as scarlet fever, pneumonia, gonorrhea, meningitis, and diphtheria. Ever since its discovery, the antibiotic penicillin has saved millions of lives. It earned Fleming, together with Howard Florey and Ernest Chain, the Nobel Prize in Physiology Medicine in 1945. After discovering penicillin, he wrote papers on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy, including original descriptions of other antimicrobials such as a lysozyme which could delyse bacterial walls, thereby killing them. Unlike penicillin, lysozyme had weak antibacterial properties, but it found numerous applications in research later. Alexander Fleming died in the year 1955 due to coronary thrombosis. During his lifetime, Fleming received numerous awards, including the Albert Gold Medal from the Royal Society of Arts in 1946. He will always be remembered for revolutionizing the field of medicine by discovering penicillin that paved the way for continuous search for newer and better antimicrobials.